


this is the taste you were forever chasing

by sublime_jumbles



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (Chubby Everyone TBH), Belly Kink, Belly Rubs, Chubby Finn, Chubby Jess, Chubby Kink, Chubby Poe Dameron, Chubby Rey, Chubby!Finn, Chubby!Jess, Chubby!Rey, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Feeding, Feeding Kink, Fluff, Force-Sensitive Finn, Force-Sensitive Rey, Gen, Hand Feeding, Implied Depression/PTSD, Light Angst, M/M, Overeating, Post-Canon, Sleepy Cuddles, Stuffing, Weight Gain, chubby!kink, chubby!poe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8018113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublime_jumbles/pseuds/sublime_jumbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Yeah?” Finn says, carefully neutral. “You like it?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Rey nods. “You look so healthy. Like you don’t just have enough, you have more than enough.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“I like it too,” he admits, and her fingers creep under his shirt. She glances at him as if to ask permission, and he nods. “I really like how it feels. I want to get bigger, I think.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY, the long-promised other-side-of-the-coin fic! this has been my primary labor of love for .... the better part of five months now, and I am so excited to finally have it done!! i hope y'all enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> a big thank-you to the ever-inspiring [bomberqueen17](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17) for giving me permission to borrow and alter the idea of pilot stimulants! and, of course, an enormous, 39-thousand-word, 91-page thank you to wy and corinne and jenna for their help and input as i was writing this. i am v v v grateful for you. 
> 
> title from vienna teng's "close to home."

Finn has never seen himself in a picture. He’s seen himself, sure, slipping in and out of mirrors, and he’s seen the blank, ghostly grimace of his helmet reflected over thousands of times in other troopers. 

But it isn’t until Poe swoops in beside him while Finn is having breakfast one morning, throws an arm around him, and tells him to smile before holding out his datapad and snapping a picture of them that Finn is actually confronted with his own static face.

“What are you doing?” he asks Poe, acutely aware of Poe’s body in relation to his own. Finn likes being close to people, but he’s still not quite used to other people taking the initiative to be close to him. He catalogs the musky scent of sweat and salt, the warm weight of Poe’s arm across Finn’s shoulders, the soft bulk of his body smushed against Finn’s, the ends of his hair grazing Finn’s skin. These are casual ways to be close to people, Finn decides. This is what you do with people you like.

Poe is brighter today than he has been, all smiles. Since Finn was discharged from the medbay two weeks ago, he’s watched Poe cycle through a strange pattern of peaks and valleys, which, Finn has gathered, appears to be contingent on his friends’ departures and returns from missions. It was worse when Finn first woke up enough to hold a conversation with Poe. He’d been expecting the warmth and charisma Poe had exuded when they were reunited after Takodana, and instead, the Poe looking back at him in the harsh light of the medbay was drained, his eyes heavy with bags, his smiles hard and strained. Finn had worried it was his fault at first - maybe he’d incurred some kind of attack by defecting, maybe they’d decided he was unfit to be one of them after all, maybe they were going to terminate him like the First Order did with troopers who were seriously injured.

But Poe had kept forcing smiles, had done what Finn understood to be his best at trying to portray the version of himself Finn was familiar with. It wasn’t until Karé and Iolo had returned from a recon mission several days later, only a few hours after Rey and Luke’s grand return, that he began to seem like that version again: eyes brighter, cheeks pinker, smiles more genuine.

Two days ago, Jess and Snap returned from a mission of their own, which explains Poe’s current giddiness, the ease and relief in his voice and shoulders. He’s loose beside Finn, keeping his arm around Finn’s shoulder as he taps at the datapad’s screen until the picture comes up.

Poe swallows a bite of his omelet, chases it with a bite of hash and a slug of caf. “I realized we don’t have any pictures together,” he says, tilting the screen so Finn can see. “And, you know, we should. In case something happens to one of us, or, you know, just to have.”

This is another thing you do with people you like, Finn figures. Take pictures of yourselves together to remember each other. He likes that. He finds he’s having a harder and harder time remembering the faces of his stormtrooper squad, and as much as he’s trying to leave the vestiges of that life behind him, it hurts a little, somewhere that’s hard to place.

“Yeah, we should,” he agrees, taking the datapad from Poe to look more closely. “Is … that what I look like?”

He squints at himself. His appearance has never been particularly important to him - he’s never had to think about what colors or styles of clothing might look good on him, how he should do his hair, if he has visible acne or not. But even in his limited experience, he can tell that he doesn’t look healthy. His cheeks are hollow, his jaw too sharp. There are shadows beneath his eyes from the trouble he’s had sleeping alone. He doesn’t look familiar, more like some kind of halfhearted attempt at looking like himself, and he checks Poe’s side of the image to see if maybe it’s just the way people look in pictures.

But Poe looks as he usually does - the full apples of his cheeks pink below bright eyes, his grin white and easy, his hair tousled and flat on one side from sleeping on it. Finn can’t help feeling a little caught out in comparison - he hadn’t realized he was looking so faded still.

“Do I look okay?” he asks, because maybe it’s just that he’s not used to seeing himself. Maybe he looks fine.

Poe looks between Finn and the image. “Sure, of course you do. I mean, you’re going to think you look weird, because you look different in pictures than you do in mirrors, and your face isn’t moving or anything, but - yeah. You look great.”

“Do I?” Finn taps the surface, accidentally enlarges the picture so that his own face fills the whole screen and taps it frantically until it returns to its original size. “Shit, sorry. I just - I don’t look, you know, sickly?”

Poe cocks his head. “Sickly?”

“I mean, I don’t look like you,” Finn goes on, hyperaware that he might be blathering. “I look - thin. My cheeks are all sunken, I look weird.”

Poe slides his arm from Finn’s shoulders, trailing it down his back gently. Finn feels his fingers linger on the ridge of the scar that runs the length of his spine. “You don’t look weird,” says Poe. “You’re still recovering from a pretty major trauma, you’re allowed to look a little less than your best.”

Finn considers that. “I guess,” he says. “In the Order they just dunked you in bacta for a couple days and then you were good as new.” He shrugs. “I guess I should just be glad they didn’t decide I was beyond repair and terminate me, huh?”

Poe gives him a wide-eyed, open-mouthed look that Finn can’t puzzle out.

“Believe me,” he says after a moment. “You look just fine, I promise. Hey, you want me to send the picture to your pad? So we can both have a copy?”

Finn nods. He wants to make some kind of gesture like Poe keeps making, trail his fingers down Poe’s back or put his arm around his shoulders, show that he’s grateful for Poe’s friendship, but before he can decide which is more appropriate, Poe brings up a hand and squeezes his shoulder, and Finn loses his train of thought.

“All set,” he says, tapping his screen, and his datapad makes a little whooshing sound. Finn’s pad dings in response. “Hey, do you want to watch a holo in Jess’s room tonight? A bunch of us are getting together, having a little celebration that we’re all home safe. She asked if you wanted to come, are you in?”

“Sure,” says Finn, and he glows a little at the invitation. He likes Jess - she makes him laugh, treats him like his dearth of sociocultural knowledge is an opportunity rather than a setback. “After dinner?”

“Instead of dinner,” says Poe. “There’ll be plenty of food, trust me.”

“Yeah, okay.” He grins up at Poe. “Thanks for asking.”

“Of course, buddy,” says Poe, and he gently scrubs a hand over the stubble of Finn’s hair. “Shit, I meant to get fruit. Do you want anything while I’m up?”

Finn shakes his head. “I’m good for now, but thanks.”

“You sure?” says Poe, smiling a little. “Put some meat back on your bones?"

Finn grins. “I’m sure. But believe me, I’ll be working on that.”

He waits until Poe’s back is turned to open their photo on his own datapad. He studies himself for a moment, the sharp angles of his cheekbones and chin. He lost weight while he was comatose, and logically he knows that means he's lost muscle mass too, he's not as  _ functional  _ like this, but he didn’t stop to think until now about how it would change the way he looked. 

He enlarges the picture and focuses on Poe. Poe is good-looking; Finn knows this as fact. He's kind-eyed, quick to smile, healthy, solidly built. Even if Finn couldn’t see it himself, he’s heard other people on base discussing it, admiring the contrast between the hard line of his jaw and the softness under his chin; singing the praises of how perfectly plump his stomach is, of the size and shape of his ass; gushing over how sweet and welcoming his rounded edges are. Roundness is new to Finn - roundness had no place in the First Order. He hasn’t seen much of it in his experience with people, and he certainly hasn’t seen it in so much detail.   
  
He’s spent his two conscious weeks on base observing Poe when they're together, ostensibly to learn how to act in the environment of the Resistance, the social norms and slang and general order of things. And Finn is learning, sure, but more and more often he’s found himself getting sidetracked by Poe’s build, the way he carries his weight not only in his stomach, but on chunky hips, on thighs that kiss against each other. He’s gotten distracted by the shape of Poe's body inside his T-shirts, the way his chest and stomach press against the fabric, the way the sleeves are snug around his biceps. Finn isn't sure if what he feels for him is attraction, or envy, or a confusion of both. All he knows for sure is that he wants to be closer to Poe, and see more of that roundness.

His attraction to Poe isn’t necessarily  _ new _ . Poe has been nothing but sweet to Finn since - well, since Poe yelled over his shoulder in the cockpit of that TIE and called Finn by a real name, a name meant for people and not for machines. Poe is his precedent for human goodness, for flickers of hope and trust in good people, and every day Finn is more sure that he’s not only fond of Poe, he’s getting attached to him.

_ (Forming attachments is a stupid choice, the propaganda holos taught him. Forming attachments will alter your brain. Having attachments will cause you to make stupid decisions, and having attachments will make you soft, and having attachments will get you killed.) _

Forming attachments doesn’t feel so much like a stupid choice anymore. He isn’t quite sure what he feels for Poe - any feelings he had about his fellow Stormtroopers he tamped right down, buried them so deep that even he couldn’t find them. He feels  _ safe  _ with Poe, vulnerable, but unthreatened in a way that he never quite managed around his squadmates. He wants to fall asleep against him and wake up to his smile. He’s always felt a little strange about kissing - he chalks it up to having spent so much time in a helmet - but he thinks it might be nice with Poe. He feels lighter, more himself than he ever has before, open and strange but steady. 

Whatever it is, he thinks it goes deeper than just friendship, but he doesn’t know quite where that lands him. The only metric he has for this kind of emotion is the way he feels about Rey, like the legendary tandem suns of Tatooine are rising in his chest. He’s lucky, he thinks, to be able to feel this way about not one but  _ two  _ people. 

He realizes with a pang that he doesn’t have any pictures of Rey. Well, he thinks. He’ll have to fix that.

\--   
  
Later that night, Finn is sitting in Poe's quarters, waiting for him to change so they can head to Jess’s room. Poe is wandering around in a pair of navy sweatpants, rummaging through his drawers for a T-shirt to replace the grease-stained one he's wearing. He’s humming to himself, fingers brushing the top of BB-8’s head every time he passes eir charging port. 

Finn hides a grin, one that’s threatening to overtake his face in the glow of his datapad. Finn likes that Poe seems to forget that he’s watching or listening sometimes, which has given Finn ample opportunity to collect Poe’s little quirks over the last few weeks: the conversations Poe has with BB-8 about droid gossip, the faces he makes at himself in the mirror before leaning in to brush his teeth or fix his hair, the way he doesn’t wear shoes or socks unless he absolutely has to, the way he bumps his fists against each other when he’s bored or nervous or waiting. 

Finn doesn’t like to intrude on these moments. He likes that they allow him to see Poe in his purest form. The datapad is especially useful for this - he’s developed an angle at which he can hold it so that it looks like he’s invested in what’s onscreen, but with just a flick of his gaze, he can keep surreptitiously observing Poe. 

Poe’s humming tapers off as he holds a couple T-shirts up to his chest in the mirror, comparing each one. Finn, catching his own eye in the reflection, hurriedly drops his gaze to his screen. 

He wishes he could use the datapad to message Rey, check in with her while she’s gone, but the reaches of space she's exploring probably don't have very good dataline connections, he thinks. She and Luke touched down on D’Qar briefly to refuel -  _ I felt you wake up _ were her first words to him when she returned, her whisper fierce against his chest - before Luke whisked her off to some cave on - Dantooine, Finn thinks? - to find a crystal for her own lightsaber.   
  
Finn’s proud of her, and he doesn’t want to interrupt what he gathers is a very important part of a Jedi’s coming of age, but he misses her, and he misses not being the only outsider on base. He wonders if there's a way to get through to her anyway, that they could figure out for the future, because if he's gotta be away from Rey there must be a way for them to at least send pictures back and forth so they can see each other's faces while they're apart. She’s been gone a while now, and now that Poe’s mentioned having pictures of people you like in case something happens to them, Finn is all too aware that it’s entirely possible he might never see her face again. 

"Okay if I switch these out real fast?" Poe asks, and Finn, preoccupied, says yes.

But then Poe's datapad beeps shrilly, startling Finn into looking up from his own screen, and when he realizes that Poe is between shirts, it's a concentrated struggle not to gasp.   
  
He doesn't know what he's been imagining under Poe’s shirt before this - just a convex curve, he guesses, firm and tan and smooth. But that's not what's looking back at him in the mirror - round is new to Finn, sure, but he didn't even think about _soft_.  
  
Poe is soft. His stomach protrudes gently over the waistband of his sweats, his navel a wide slit in the mound of dough. There’s a little cleft a few inches beneath the indent. Dark hair trails down into his sweats, winds a thin line up to his soft chest. His waist nips in a little before his sides curve out again, like parentheses to the lower half of his torso. Finn can make out a few pale pink lines along the bottom of his belly, along his sides, and with some squinting he realizes, with a little tickle in his own stomach, that they're stretch marks. And then Poe bends to grab the clean t-shirt off the floor, and his sides _fold_ , bunching into rolls, and Finn sucks in a long breath. He wants to know how that kind of softness would feel under his fingers, if it would be as smooth and yielding as it looks.   
  
"That was Jess," Poe announces, turning the shirt right-side-out. Finn takes in the long crease that runs between his shoulders, down to the twin dimples at the small of his back, at the way his sides bulge into considerable handfuls over his waistband. "She's wondering where we are."  
  
"Hey," Finn manages, a little husky at first. He looks back at his datapad under the pretense of putting it to sleep. "I’m ready, I'm just waiting on you, buddy."  
  
He watches Poe wriggle into the shirt, and he bites his lip when he notices the slight jiggle of Poe’s belly in the mirror. Poe looks settled, he thinks. Indulgent. He doesn’t look like anyone is policing him. He looks … what’s the word the First Order always used to describe troopers who were beyond reconditioning? _Autonomous_.

Finn decides in a rush of heat that he wants to look like that. He imagines himself gaining back the weight he’s lost, losing his Stormtrooper muscles under a soft layer of fat, having the control to craft his body until he feels comfortable in it, until he feels like a person instead of a weapon. 

He ducks his head so Poe won't see his anticipatory grin and ask what he's smiling about. He feels a little weird saying anything to Poe just yet, unsure if it'll make him uncomfortable to admit his body was Finn’s impetus. 

But stars, he wishes he could tell Rey.

\-- 

Finn vastly underestimates how much food will be at this get-together in Jess’s room. It seems like every surface that hasn’t been designated for lounging upon is crowded with plates and bowls and platters, and he almost upends a tray of cookies in trying to settle himself on an empty cushion next to Poe. He manages to right it before the cookies tumble to the floor - Stormtrooper reflexes remain handy in the outside world. 

Finn doesn't recognize all of the foods laid out, but Poe explains to him that some of it - the kinds that look too fancy or brightly colored to have come out of the mess hall kitchen - are things the other pilots have picked up on leave or on supply runs, brand-name treats or snacks that aren't available on D’Qar. He grabs a paper plate and loads it for Finn, describing as he goes:  _ These are hard and crunchy and salty. These are sour and chewy. This is sweet and it's better if you let it melt in your mouth for a little while. You know what these are, they have these in the mess. Here, try a little of this, see if you like it. No? Okay, we’ll skip that one. These here are spicy before they're sweet, be careful. This one you'll want to grab a spoon for, it's slippery. _

The plate Poe puts together for himself is piled even higher, and Finn squirms a little. This is why Poe is so soft, Finn thinks. He's never seen Poe eat fewer than two helpings of anything when they're in the mess together. He can  _ afford _ to eat as much as he wants, more than he needs. 

They settle onto two cushions near Jess’s bed, and Finn’s grip on his plate tightens when he notices the pile Poe’s belly forms in his lap when he sits. The seating is so tight that he can feel the warmth of Poe’s body, the soft bulge of his side pressed against Finn’s own hip.

Finn is still a little self-conscious about eating in front of other people. His portions have been measured out for him his whole life; he has no idea how much he's allowed now that he's on base. Or, he supposes, the point is that there  _ isn't  _ a set amount he's allowed to have, but he's still skittish about taking more than he deserves. He sees the way people look at him still, like they're waiting for him to snap, to launch an ambush against the Resistance from the inside, and he's hesitant to further anyone’s negative opinions of him by taking more than his share of food.

Poe always encourages him to have more if he wants it, assures him that no one is judging him or going to take it away. Finn is getting a little better at believing it. He likes the freedom of getting to choose his meals in the mess hall, being able to take as much as he wants without being punished - he just gets hesitant about taking advantage of that kind of privilege. 

He would be safe asking for more in this kind of company, he decides. He likes the pilots, they like him. There's clearly plenty of food - it'll be okay if he wants to have a little extra once he finishes this plate. If he wants to start getting soft, he should start eating more anyway. 

Jess crawls up to Poe’s other side as Finn is trying one of the sour chewy things Poe heaped onto his plate. They’re brightly colored candies, shaped like anoobas, and Jess reaches across Poe to snag one off his plate. Finn smirks a little, because the first and only time he tried that with Rey, she had backhanded him like it was easy as breathing. 

“Hey, boys,” says Jess, tweaking Poe’s side above the waistband of his sweats. She nods to Finn. “Glad you could make it, padawan.” 

(“Shouldn't you be calling  _ Rey _ ‘padawan?’” Finn had asked when Jess first began using the term for him. “She's the Jedi.”

Jess had shrugged. “Yeah, but you're kinda  _ our _ padawan, right? We’ll teach you the ways of everything  _ but  _ the Force. Plus, I'm calling Rey ‘hotshot,’ because that's what I used to call Dameron when he joined up and I wanna see how long it'll take him to notice.”)

“We figured it's probably our responsibility to catch you up on pop culture,” she continues, “and your education is going to start with one of the best ghost holos the galaxy has ever seen.”

“I'm game,” says Finn, and Poe laughs. 

“Don't get your hopes up,” he says. “It's awful. She's subjected me to  _ The Menacing Phantom _ like seven times over the past few years. It never gets any better.”

“It's a classic,” Jess says.

“The effects are  _ terrible _ ,” Poe counters. 

“It's  _ starting _ ,” Jess hisses, as her little R5 unit begins to whir behind them. “Karé, can you hit the lights?”

Across the room, Karé obliges, then leans back against Snap, and Finn wonders briefly if he isn't the only one who likes the look of softness. 

The holo starts, and Finn feels Poe inhale and exhale a deep, settling breath beside him. When Finn looks over, Poe’s mouth is full, and he's already spooning up another bite of the slippery stuff off to the side of his plate. Poe eats steadily, Finn has learned from observing him, but there's a sense of leisure in the act too, like he's never had to worry about his food being taken away from him. 

Finn follows suit, picking up his spoon and taking a bite. It  _ is  _ slippery, smooth and sweet, and he takes another bite in quick succession. 

He tries to focus on the holo between bites, in case Jess asks what he thinks of it - he doesn't want her to think he doesn't appreciate her attempt to include him. The effects don't look too bad to him, but Finn figures he hasn't seen too many holos, so how would he know? The propaganda vids the First Order used to show were hardly designed for entertainment. 

He isn't prepared for the jump scares that keep following the ominous swells of the music. The first time, he startles so violently that he spills a couple of gummy anoobas into Poe’s lap. 

“You doing okay?” Poe asks, picking up one of the stray candies and popping it into his mouth. Finn nods. 

“Yeah. I just …. we didn't have these in the Order, that's all.” 

Poe smiles. “You can hold onto me if it gets too scary. I don't mind.”

Finn’s heart feels as though it's hurtling through hyperspace. If he holds Poe’s hand, he’ll want to lean into him, and while he likes it when Poe leans against  _ him _ , he’s still wary about initiating that kind of contact. But at the same time, it makes him feel warm all over that Poe is offering to let Finn touch him at all. 

“Maybe,” he manages. “Thanks.”

Poe smiles again, leaning into him a little, and Finn feels himself tense. Poe doesn't get nervous about this kind of affectionate contact, so why should he? This is casual. It'll be okay if he leans back. Maybe he'll even -

Finn takes Poe’s hand. Poe glances at him, the end of a smile still on his lips, and squeezes his hand. Finn smiles back, a little tight, trying to keep at least some of his control. He feels like he’s floating, anchored only by Poe’s grip on his hand. 

This time, when the music gets ominous, Finn pays attention. He steels himself, waits for the Sullustan onscreen to peer into the sublevel of their ship, and then - 

_ Poe  _ yelps as the ghost leaps onto the screen, jolting his and Finn’s shoulders together, and when Finn looks over at him, wide-eyed, Jess is laughing behind him, and Poe lets go of Finn’s hand to rub at at his sides. 

“She always grabs me at this part,” Poe grouses, elbowing Jess. “I should expect it by now.”

“It's not my fault,” says Jess. “You're just so eminently grabbable. Look at those love handles. How could I  _ not  _ grab a handful?”

“Love handles?” asks Finn, before he thinks better of it. 

“This part right here,” says Jess, grabbing onto Poe. “Above your hips. They're called that because if you've got ‘em, your partner has something to hold onto when you're … y'know.” 

Finn tries to keep himself from blushing. He knows it'll only feed the somehow-rampant notion that he's some kind of prude, but that's not the root of his embarrassment.  _ That _ would be the thought of his own hands on Poe’s sides, of Poe or Rey's hands on Finn’s own hypothetical love handles. 

Poe reaches around to Jess’s other side and gently pinches the little roll above the waistband of her leggings. “Listen to you, all smug about it.”

Jess shrugs. “Love handles are the best body part.” She glances at Finn. “That answer your question, padawan?”

“Uh, yeah,” says Finn. “That about … that about covers it, yeah.”

It's tough to concentrate on the holo after that. His hand keeps drifting to the side that isn't pressed against Poe, fingers curling around the knob of his hipbone, trying to imagine a roll of fat there instead. He imagines Poe and Rey snuggling up to him, grabbing handfuls of him, resting their heads against his soft chest.

He finishes his plate of food with a renewed vigor, then lets Poe refill it when he goes up to get himself a second helping. By the end of the holo, he's a little uncomfortably full, his pants biting into his stomach. As subtly as he can, he fits two fingers between his skin and waistband, pulling at it to give himself some breathing room. When Karé finally hits the lights again, he realizes he's not the only one who’s overfull - Jess has the waistband of her leggings rolled down, her pudgy belly pushing over the fabric, and Iolo has his pants unbuttoned on Jess’s other side. Karé has shifted position, sitting between Snap’s legs with her own legs hooked over his, and she's massaging his stomach under his t-shirt. 

Beside him, Poe gives an indulgent burp and pats his belly. He shifts, elbowing Finn as he moves, and Finn realizes in a burst of warmth that he’s rolling his waistband down too, his stomach looking a little less soft than it did earlier. Finn called it quits after two plates of food, but he watched Poe work his way through three, then share a fourth with Jess and Iolo. Finn’s stomach grumbles just thinking about trying to eat that much.

“Mmm, I'm stuffed,” says Poe, leaning back on his hands. His stomach gurgles with the movement. 

Jess burps, prodding at her own belly. “Me too. Glad I don't have to roll myself farther than my bed.”

Poe groans softly, curling forward to rub a hand across his stomach. “Did you have enough, Finn?”

Finn nods, trying to keep his expression neutral. “Yeah, I'm full.”

“Hope so,” says Jess. “We gotta work on padding over those abs. You’re too thin!”

Finn is a lot of things, but thin isn't one of them - he's too muscular for that, even with the mass he lost while he was unconscious. But it's nice to hear from Jess anyway, because  _ too thin  _ means that nobody will think it's weird if he tries to soften up. 

“I’ll work on it,” he promises her, thrilling a little, and next to her he catches the tail end of a smile before Poe’s face melts into a yawn.

“Sleepy?” asks Jess, and Poe squirms toward Finn as she pokes at his sides again.

“Approaching food coma,” he says, nodding. “My back’s gonna get stiff if I pass out on your floor, so I might head back to mine.”

“Okay, old man,” she teases him. “Go sleep it off. Hey, Finn?”

“Yeah?”

She reaches over Poe to gently tap Finn’s belly, and Finn blushes. “If you’re really full, don’t sleep on your stomach. You’ll feel gross in the morning. Sleep on your back instead.”

“Um, thanks,” he says. “I will.”

He unfolds himself from the floor and his stomach twinges a little, its contents shifting. He takes a deep breath and settles himself, then extends a hand to Poe, who’s bracing himself against the wall as he slowly pulls himself off the floor, one hand cradling the underside of his belly.

“Here,” says Finn. “I can help you.”

Poe takes his hand, smiles gratefully. “Thanks, buddy. I’m a little full for, you know, movement.”

And damn if that doesn’t have Finn feeling some kind of way. 

He lets Poe lean against him on the way back to their end of the hallway, feeling his body jolt a little with the occasional hiccup. Poe’s eyes are drooping, sleep visibly tugging at him as he brushes his teeth, and Finn tries hard not to stare at how his belly shelfs out over the sink. 

Poe lets out a soft, content groan once he’s settled himself on his back in bed. “You good to get back to yours? You're doing okay?”

Finn smiles. “Yeah, I'm good.”

Poe reaches up lazily and pokes at Finn’s barely-swollen belly through his t-shirt. Finn’s breath catches. 

“Look at you,” says Poe, and Finn can't pinpoint if his voice is pleased or amused or both. “You're full.”

“Yeah,” says Finn softly. “I am.”

Poe’s hand drops to Finn’s, squeezes it gently. “Good,” he says. “Sleep well.”

Finn carries the sensation of their hands together all the way back to his own bed. He lays on his back, turning the events of the night over in his head, massaging his belly with one hand. He doesn't know if he likes being overfull as much as Poe and Jess seem to, isn't a fan of the way he can feel his stomach stretching and the guilt that nudges at him for eating more than his share. But that's okay, he figures. He won't exercise as much, he'll skip a couple of the early runs he's been going on with the new recruits each week. He can eat a lot without overeating, maybe talk to someone about the best foods for gaining fat instead of muscle. He’ll start cleaning his plate instead of pushing his leftovers over to Poe. 

(He wonders if Poe has put on any weight from eating his leftovers. But then, Poe eats so much that Finn thinks his fairly modest leftovers probably haven't made that much of a difference.) 

He palms his stomach absently. He can feel the little bump of his bloated belly, but it's too taut, too hard under his skin to be exciting. Instead, he thinks ahead to when his body is as soft and plush as Poe’s, and falls asleep dreaming of Poe and Rey dozing off on the pillow of his stomach. 


	2. Chapter 2

When Rey returns home - base-home, not Jakku-home, although it’s beginning to feel like they’re not the same word at all - the hilt of a light saber gleams new at her hip. Finn grabs her into a hug that makes her glow all over, holding her tight, pressing his face into her shoulder, and she feels herself inadvertently lift the two of them an inch or so in the air.    
  
She takes his face in her hands, drinking in the light in his eyes, the unabashed joy written in every movement of his face as he looks at her. “I missed you,” he breathes, lacing his hands at the small of her back, and she bows her head so that their foreheads touch.    
  
“I missed you too, friend,” she says. “It's good to see you.”   
  
_ Good _ doesn't even begin to encompass the way she feels about being able to see his face, to feel him breathing against her, vibrantly uneven after all those long nights of listening to his deep, steady comatose breaths. Finn feels more like the Force does when she calls on it, warm and fluid, an encompassing safeness billowing over her like the cloak Luke kept stubbornly draping around her at night while they traveled.   
  
She steps closer to him, arms settling around his waist. He feels different, thicker. She thumbs at his sides to find that they're nudging over the waistband of his pants just the smallest bit, and she's debating whether or not to comment on it - on Jakku this would be a good thing, a sign of health and prosperity - when BB-8 whirls toward her with Poe at eir heels. 

BB-8 spins around her feet, chirping excitedly. “And you, yes. I missed you too,” she says fondly, reaching down to give eir antenna a gentle flick. “Have you been staying out of trouble?”

BB-8 beeps an affirmative. 

“So have I.”

_ As much as you can with a Skywalker, _ replies BB-8, and she hears Poe’s laughter overlap with her own. 

(And Poe - Poe feels like when the desert just begins to darken, cool breezes sweeping over the dunes, drawing relief over her hot shoulders in the hour or so before the cold of the night crept up.) 

“Don't listen to B,” he says, grinning as he sidles up to her and Finn. “Ey’s been spending too much time listening to R2-D2’s tales of the glory days.”

She lets go of Finn to sink against Poe in a hug, his warm bulk as comforting now as it was to settle against back in the medbay, then steps back and takes each of their hands in hers. She can feel both of their threads in the fabric of the Force, Finn's steady and blue as the sky on water, Poe’s fainter, the lush green of sun-warmed jungle, and she squeezes their hands. The Force to her feels like a sunrise, her own thread an orangey pink, the rest of the galaxy disseminated throughout in rays of light and the dark of stormclouds on the horizon.   
  
Finn brings their hands to his lips and kisses hers, smiling at her over their knuckles. “Come on,” he says. “You've gotta check in with medical, make sure you didn't catch anything weird out there - and then I want to hear about everything. Are you hungry? We can go get something from the mess afterward?”

Rey  _ is  _ hungry. She and Luke have been living off protein packs and rations, a step or two up from the portions she’d survived on back on Jakku, and occasionally wild game when she was able to catch and cook it. She'd settle for anything at the moment as long as she can put it in her stomach. 

“Yes,” she says, squeezing his hand again. “I want to tell you everything.” She tilts her head toward Poe. “You too.”

Finn beams. Poe squeezes her hand. “We’ll meet you,” he says. “I've got an appointment with General Organa while you're visiting the medbay, but we’ll go after.”

Rey's stop at the medbay doesn't take long. Doctor Kalonia sends her off with instructions to drink what seems, to Rey, like an obscene amount of water, and to eat something that didn't come out of a package. 

“Did Skywalker feed you at  _ all _ ?” she asks as Rey pulls her boots back on. “You should get a few pounds on those bones. Have one of the pilots show you the mess hall. Take Dameron, he certainly knows his way around. Wexley, Pava - they'll help you out.”

Rey grins. “I've already got Dameron enlisted.” 

For all the meals they'd shared before she left to find Luke, huddled over Finn’s medical cot in gradually shorter silences, Poe hadn't actually taken her to the mess hall. Mostly he had just brought food to her while she waited with Finn: little plastoid containers of rice or meat, paper cups of soup or chopped fruit, sweet rice with little bites of dried fruit, nutrition bars, sometimes a couple of cookies wrapped in a napkin once she told him about the spicy-sweet ones she’d found on the freighter she’d discovered and repaired years ago. 

“Do you want something from the mess?” he asked her the first night they’d sat together in the medbay, Rey shell-shocked and numb, an IV siphoning fluids into her.

She looked over at him, not processing. For as still and drained as her body was, her mind was a sandstorm, howling and lashing in circles, overwhelmed with colors and echoes and  _ feelings _ , somehow, feelings that weren’t her own, and the same gentle preternatural hum she had always assumed was just the sound of Jakku. But it was still present, soft and constant, and she filed away the realization that it was probably inside of  _ her _ for a time when she was better equipped to process it.

“Rey?” said Poe softly, and she focused on him too hard, felt herself plunge into his headspace. He felt odd, sad, reaches of light struggling around darkness like the solar eclipses she used to watch from the dunes. It wasn’t the same kind of darkness she’d felt on Starkiller, thick and liquid and beguiling. This felt more like grief - it didn’t burn, it didn’t boil, it just sucked at him. He was aware of it, she could feel that much. He felt guilty about it. He felt - 

She pushed too hard and he flinched, his mind closing off, and she reeled herself back in, bundled further into herself. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled, her voice as thin as the paper robe they’d wrestled her into upon her entrance to medbay. “I didn’t mean to."  


He scrubbed his hand through his curls, avoiding her eyes. “I know. Sorry, I’m a little gun-shy still. Don’t worry about it.”

She nodded. “I won't do it again,” she said, and he'd crossed his arms, dished up a smile that, even to Rey's untrained eyes, looked like it took too much effort to be real. 

“Anyway,” he said, “did you - do you want something from the mess? Some caf or something? I’ll grab you something.”

She tried to home in on just his words this time, fishing them out of the cyclone in her brain rather than entering his.  _ Do you want. Something from the mess. Some caf or something.  _ The mess?

“The what?” she asked, and he seemed almost embarrassed when she met his eyes.

“Oh,” he said. “Right, the, um - the mess. Mess hall. The … cafeteria?” He cocked his head, waiting to see if anything took hold with her. “It’s where the food is?”

She gave a blank little nod, too tired to reason that out, or pretend that she knew what he was talking about. She was hungry, but the idea of working down polystarch and veg-meat tugged at her too hard, reminded her that only a day or two ago she was still no one, that she was still out there waiting.

“So …?” he asked, gently bumping his shoulder into hers. She didn’t have the energy to react. “Can I get you anything? Water maybe? I know you have, you know” - he gestured to the IV - “but just to sip?”

She’d stopped listening after  _ water _ . She repeated the word back to him like a prayer, and he’d set off.

He felt peculiar to her, familiar and strange all at once. BB-8 had chattered about Poe almost incessantly the night ey stayed in Rey’s bunker back on Jakku, telling her how good and kind he was, how talented, how generous. She had brushed it off at the time, trying to avoid forming her own bond with the droid - the newer units had a tendency to get attached more quickly than older models - before depositing em in town the next morning, but those kernels of information had stayed with her. 

(When he’d first introduced himself, that was what had flashed to the surface of her brain -  _ Poe Dameron: kind to droids  _ \- and she’d smiled in spite of herself, in spite of the wild, sprawling turmoil inside and around her.) 

He’d brought her water, and he’d brought two plates. “Have whatever you like,” he said, and quietly, he had explained what everything was. His voice was soft, conversational without demanding her input, and once he had finished speaking, she took a deep breath and carefully placed the hand without the IV on top of his.

“Thank you,” she said, and this time his eyes had crinkled at the corners when he smiled. After, when he’d gone off to wash up, she had taken Finn’s hand, found his pulse, and told him that BB-8 was right about Poe. 

Now, gawking in the mess, flanked by Finn and Poe, she thinks that maybe generosity isn't specifically a Poe thing. Maybe it's a Resistance thing. 

There's just so much. There are tureens, trays, serving dishes, platters piled high with food she’s largely unfamiliar with. It seems outrageous to have this much food constantly available to such a relatively small sector of people. 

She looks between Finn and Poe, eyes wide. “Do I just …?” 

“Here,” says Finn, handing her a plate. “Watch me.”

She watches as he moves down the buffet line, scooping food onto his plate as he goes. She holds her own plate close to her chest, the sounds of chatter and dishes clattering pressing in on her. 

“Rey?” says Finn, looking back. “Are you okay?”

She realizes she's frozen, but it's hard to make herself relax, even when Finn circles back to her, face creased with concern. 

“Hey,” he says, keeping a few steps away from her. “Are you okay?”

She breathes in, out. “How is there so much?”

He steps a little closer. “I know. I was overwhelmed too, at first. It doesn't seem real, does it? I was afraid I'd wake up and I'd be back on Starkiller, that none of this would have happened and I would just be … trapped right back where I'd started.”

She nods, leaning into him. “Yeah. It doesn't seem like it could be real. None of this does.”

It's been haunting her, trailing a few steps behind every thought like a droid that's too old to keep up. None of this seems like it could ever be real, like it could happen to  _ her.  _ Who is she to join the Resistance in a war she hadn't had any stake in until a few weeks ago, to take up one of their bunks, to use their water, to eat their food? Who is she to whirl around the galaxy with  _ Luke Skywalker,  _ to build herself a light saber, to call herself a Jedi? Who is she to become  _ someone _ ?

“It's real,” says Finn. “I keep telling myself. Pinching myself. I haven't woken up yet. You won't either.”

He holds his hand out to her, and she pries one of her own off her plate to take it. He squeezes it and smiles, and gently tugs her toward the food, Poe lagging behind them. 


	3. Chapter 3

“Don’t worry,” says Finn, “we’ll go slow. You’ll get sick anyway if you try too much too soon.”

Rey wrinkles her nose, like that possibility hadn’t occurred to her. “What kind of sick?”

Finn flashes back to his first meal outside the medbay, how it felt fine until it  _ didn’t _ , the few minutes’ turnaround between feeling full and feeling ill, the awful convulsion of his body as it rejected everything he’d just put into it. Poe’s hand in his own clammy one afterward, Poe’s wrung-out apologies -  _ I didn’t know. I thought you’d be okay, you’ve been here a while, I didn’t realize -  _

“You’ll just throw up,” he says, “you’ll feel gross for a while,” and oddly, some of the panic leaves her stance.

“That’s not so bad,” she says. “On Jakku you can go blind from drinking some kinds of water.”

“That,” says Finn, “is not surprising  _ in the least _ ,” and he hears Poe laugh from behind them when Rey swats at him with her empty plate.

“Come on,” says Poe, herding them forward. “We’ll take care of you, Rey, don’t worry. You'll get used to it.” He spoons something soft and sand-colored onto his plate. “It took Finn a little while, but he's an old pro by now. Cleans his plate instead of leaving me his leftovers.”

Finn watches the word  _ leftovers  _ send her spinning again as they move down the line.

“You take as much as you want?” Rey asks, pausing in front of a dish of chasuka greens. “Or do you take more than me because your rank is higher?”

Poe shakes his head. “As much as you want.”

Her hand hovers over the serving spoon. “How much is enough?”

Finn leans over. “Take a scoop,” he says. “We’ll get you a couple different things so you can try them.” When he was first acclimating himself to the volume and variety of the mess, it helped to take little portions of a few different things - it made him feel like he was eating more than he was without diminishing the glory of being able to choose from so many options. 

He and Poe both take two spoonfuls of the greens, and she looks between them, eyes growing suspicious. “Why are you taking more, then?”

“Bigger appetites,” says Poe. “You've been living on rations and protein packs, your stomach probably doesn't have as much room. You can come back for more if you want it.”

She squints at him. “That doesn’t sound real.”

“Hey, hey,” says Finn, because her free hand is starting to flex at her side. “Try some of this.” He gestures to the tureen of mashed amber-root in front of him. “This is good. Here.” He dumps a scoop onto her plate before dumping a slightly larger scoop onto his own, and she bares her teeth at him. Finn takes a step back.

He knows that part of her is still wild, that she was never conditioned into perfect manners and regulated portion sizes like he was, and he loves that in her. Rey is so bright, so vibrant, so insistently  _ alive _ that sometimes he forgets she had to fight tooth and nail to remain that way. But it’s moments like these that remind him that she didn’t survive however many bleak, unforgiving years on Jakku without taking food and portion sizes  _ very  _ seriously. 

“You can come back if you want more,” he says, voice placating. “I'm not trying to stiff you, I promise. You can have as much as you want.”

She huffs a little, and takes the serving spoon from him. She slaps another scoop onto her plate, then reaches back and adds another spoonful of chasuka greens as well. She glances between Poe and Finn, jaw set, eyes daring them to react.

When neither of them yanks her plate away, Finn watches the steel in her eyes retreat some, and she follows him down the line until her plate is full. 

As they settle at a table, he watches her scout out her surroundings, can see her filing details away. She squares her shoulders and arranges herself protectively around her plate, and his heart twists for the years she spent living every second on the defensive. 

He watches her pick up a fork, her grip all wrong. She focuses on something lower than his gaze, and after trying to subtly follow her eyes for a minute, he realizes she’s observing his hands, the way he’s holding his own utensils. She tries to replicate it in her own hand, but her grasp still looks clumsy, and Finn does his best to suppress a fond smile when, after a moment, she gives up, wraps her fist around her fork, and pushes some of her mashed amber-root onto it with her fingers. 

She catches him anyway when she looks up, her eyes crinkling a little when they meet his. 

“What is this?” she asks around her mouthful. 

“It's amber-root,” says Finn. “They mash it up with some milk and spices.”

“I like it,” she says, pushing more onto her fork.

“I like it too,” he says, nodding, and he hopes he sounds encouraging instead of like he’s threatening her. “There are amber-root chips too. They're all crispy and salty. The pilots like them, they bring them back from supply runs sometimes.”

Poe laughs around fitting a large bite of bread into his mouth. “You name it, the pilots are fond of it,” he says behind his hand. Rey mimics the gesture and he laughs again, not meanly. 

“That's what you do if you're chewing and you need to say something,” he tells her. “I mean, you shouldn't really talk with your mouth full, it's not really considered polite, but in casual company like this, you know, Finn and I won't mind.”

She takes that in, cheeks puffed full like a kid’s, nods, and lowers her eyes to her plate again. 

As she keeps eating, it becomes clearer that this is definitely not going to be the meal where she regales them with tales of Luke Skywalker and faraway planets, of crystal caves and Force training. Rey is entirely focused on the plate in front of her, and she doesn’t even look up when Poe asks her gently if everything is good, if there’s anything she doesn’t like.

(Privately, although Finn knows he’s just being nice, he’s a little bit glad that Rey doesn’t hear this. He knows how that question would sound to her, because it sounded the same to him when Poe asked him weeks ago: condescending, almost rude, because what else would this food be to them? It’s hot, it’s fresh, it hasn’t been constituted with water. It has color, flavor. They would have to be supremely ungrateful, Finn thinks,  _ not  _ to like it. He imagines Rey’s eyes flashing with the perceived slight. He thinks Poe should count himself pretty lucky that she’s too absorbed in exploring the contents of her plate to consider backhanding him with it.)

He wonders, absently, what Rey would look like with a little extra weight on her. A little padding to her stomach, some softness on her hips, at the tops of her thighs, where Finn, delightedly, has noticed some pudge gathering on himself. He’s pleased with how his weight has been progressing - his pants are snugger now, his stomach softer. His undershirts cling around his waist more. In her limited time on base, he’s noticed Rey looking wide-eyed at larger people, at the xenos who carry extra fat, and he wonders if that looks like luxury to her. If she’ll find it as appealing as he does, on herself or on others. He wonders if maybe she’ll want to do this with him. 

That would be nice, he thinks, unable to keep himself from grinning about it. 

Poe catches him and grins back. “Ready for seconds?” he asks, gesturing to Finn’s empty plate. 

“Yeah, I …” He trails off as he glances at Rey, who's picking up chunks of nuna meat with her hands. “Let's wait for Rey, I don't want to leave her alone.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Poe. “When she's ready.”

It’s several more minutes before Rey is ready - or, at least, before she stops eating. She sits back from her plate, and Finn bites back a smile as he watches a burp take her by surprise, her eyes going wide.

“How do you feel?” he asks, and she takes a moment, looks down at her stomach. Her hand drifts down to her belly as it gurgles.

“I’m okay,” she says, raising her gaze to her plate. There’s still some bread piled at the side, and she squints at it as if trying to decide whether or not to eat it.

“If you’re done,” Finn offers, “I’ll finish the rest.”

She turns her narrowed eyes on him and pulls her plate closer. “I’m not.”

“Okay,” he says gently. “Do you want to go up again, or will that be enough?”

She looks between his and Poe’s plates, both scraped clean, then back down at her own, at the bit of food still on it. “No one’s going to take this away, are they?”

“Go with Finn,” says Poe, smiling encouragingly. “I’ll watch your plate and I’ll go when you come back.”

“Thank you,” she says, but as she follows Finn back to the line, he notices her glancing over her shoulder again and again, keeping a close eye on Poe.

“Hey,” says Finn, once they’re in line. “It’s okay. No one is going to take your food here, I promise. No one is going to make you work for it. They won’t cut back your portions to make you work harder or send you to bed without food to punish you. You won’t get spoiled food if you make a mistake. You -”

Rey grabs his hand, squeezes it.

“They gave you spoiled food?” she asks, brow furrowed. He nods.

“I’ll kick their asses,” she says, and turns back to the food. 

Finn is glad he’s in front of her in line, so she can’t see the giant, goofy smile that spreads across his face at the idea of Rey wanting to protect him.

She’s much more selective this time, loading her plate with bread, raw vegetables, hard cheese, some of the cookies from the dessert section of the buffet. Finn pays attention as he loads his own plate, sees what she likes. He wonders if the variety of textures is weird for her - it was strange to him too when he first arrived. 

Poe and her first plate are still where she left them, a respectful distance apart, when they return to the table, and she smiles gratefully when he pushes the plate back toward her. “Thank you, friend,” she says, moving the bread to her second plate and stacking the empty plate beneath it.

“No problem,” says Poe, giving her an easy smile as he gets up. “Just go slow, okay?”

She nods, pulling some napkins from the holder in the center of the table. Finn takes his eyes off her for a few moments to dig into his second helping, and when he looks up again, she’s methodically wrapping her food in napkins, carefully tucking the little parcels into the folds of her tunic.

“What are you doing?” he asks, pausing with his fork in midair. 

She glances at him. “Saving it for later,” she says slowly, like he might not understand her otherwise.

“Why? There’s the commissary store if you get hungry later. I guess we didn’t show you that yet. But you don’t need to wrap this up. There’ll be more tomorrow.”

She regards him like he’s missing something - part of his brain maybe, from her tone. “Yes, but this is for when there  _ isn’t  _ any food.”  

“When there isn’t …?”

She widens her eyes at him like that’ll help him understand.

“ _ Oh _ ,” he says. 

He knows she didn’t have enough, but he’s been assuming that her experience was more like his own - enough food to keep him alive and functional, but not enough to make him feel satisfied. He never considered that maybe she meant she didn’t have enough to  _ live _ . 

“I don’t think that will happen,” he tries weakly. “There’s plenty of food here, it would take a total disaster to destroy all of it.”

Too late, he considers how much disaster Rey has seen in the past few weeks alone, how her capacity to expect and fear disaster has probably mestastisized to an all-time high.

“You know what?” he says, and she tilts her head expectantly, like she’s caught on to his realization and wants to hear him backpedal. “Take it back to your room. It’s okay. Just make sure you eat it soon or the cleaning droids will take it.”

She looks mildly affronted. “That’s a bit rude.”

He laughs. “Droids don’t understand food, I don’t think.”

Poe returns with his second plate piled high, a steaming mug of hot chocolate in his other hand. Finn carefully averts his eyes from the way Poe’s t-shirt pulls at his belly when he sits, half envious and half aroused. His belly button is deep enough that it creates a little indent in the fabric, and Finn is impatiently awaiting the day that he's soft enough to look like that too. 

“You cleaned that up fast,” says Poe, nodding to Rey's plate, and she looks at him wide-eyed. “You feel okay?”

She nods, glances at Finn. “Yeah. I think so.” Poe lifts his mug to his lips, and Rey's gaze fixes on it. 

“What's that?”

Poe lowers the mug before it touches his lips and holds it out to her. “Hot chocolate. Here, try it. Careful, don’t burn yourself.”

She hesitates. “Are you sure? It’s  _ yours _ .”

Poe smiles. “I’m sure. See if you like it.”

She grasps the mug in both hands and pauses with it just beneath her nose, closing her eyes. “That smells so nice.”

Finn’s heart swells. Poe nudges his shoulder against Finn’s, and Finn recognizes the reigned-in smile on his face. It’s the same look he used to catch Poe wearing when he was going through the wide-eyed, overwhelmed stage Rey is experiencing right now.

(“Why do you always smile like that?” he’d asked Poe once, imitating him. “Like that. Huh? Am I doing something wrong? Are you laughing at me?”

“No, no,” Poe said, face falling. “I just - I don’t want to embarrass you. I like watching you learn, but I don’t want to make you self-conscious by calling attention to you while you do it.”

Finn had softened. “ _ Oh _ ,” he’d said, and then he’d smirked a little. “Yeah, I guess that smile of yours  _ is  _ pretty distracting.”

Poe grinned back, full-out this time. “I don’t remember you learning how to  _ flirt _ ,” he said, and Finn’s head went a little dizzy.)

Now, he gives Poe his own version of the tucked-away smile, nudging him back as Rey takes her first sip of hot chocolate. She holds it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing, eyes still closed. 

“Oh,” she says finally, like a sigh. “I like that.”

“Yeah?” 

Rey nods, holding the mug close to her chest. She looks like she's having a hard time convincing herself to hand it back to him. 

“We could share it,” she says uncertainly, and Finn’s heart scrunches again. He’d been worried, at first, that their dynamics would change when Rey returned. He hasn’t seen much of her interactions with Poe, and although Poe only ever spoke of her fondly while she was gone, he was afraid Rey wouldn’t warm up to him as quickly, might find his guidance condescending where Finn found it reassuring, endearing. But to see them like this - Poe looking after her, encouraging her, sharing with her, and Rey  _ letting him _ \- he grins into his lap. He thinks this is how the Force must feel, buoyant and joyful and full of hope.

Poe shakes his head at her, smiles. “Don't worry about it. You keep that one, I'll get another. Finn, you need anything?”

He puts his hand on Finn’s shoulder, and Finn lets himself lean into it. He's been working on sharing more casual touches with people since he got on base - that kind of interpersonal contact was discouraged among stormtroopers. He watches Rey watch them, dissect the interaction in her head. 

Finn is still working on his second plate, but with Poe’s hand on his shoulder, he'll say yes to a lot of things.

“Maybe a dessert or two.”

He gets a little caught up in watching Poe’s hips roll, the way his backside wobbles a little when he walks, and he comes back to himself when there's a gentle bump against his other side, and he realizes that Rey has switched sides at the table. 

“Hey,” he says, turning to her. “You okay?”

She nods, still clutching the mug to her chest. “Tired.”

“Yeah, I bet. We can go soon, you can wash up and sleep.”

She leans her head on his shoulder, and the same warmth he feels when Poe touches him surges through his chest. 

“Luke  _ snores _ ,” she says into his shoulder. “I thought a Jedi master would be above that sort of thing.”

Finn laughs. “No way.”

“ _ Yes _ ,” she says, grinning. “I had to teach myself how to block off my hearing so I could sleep. And I can sleep through  _ sandstorms _ , Finn. That's how bad this was.”

He brings up a hand to stroke her hair. “ _ I _ don't snore.”

In the moment afterward, he wonders if that's too much. He'd like to sleep next to Rey, to listen to the song of her breathing as he falls asleep. Years of sleeping arm to arm with other troopers have trained him well for bedmates; he doesn't snore, doesn't move around much. He wants to be close to her, breathe in her warm sandy smell, tinged at the edges with the charred, staticky smell of space. She is kinetic, her quiet energy bleeding into him, reassuring him with the same grounding heaviness that his armor used to. Even now, with her breathing softly against him, he feels calmer.

“The General gave me a room,” she says, sipping at her hot chocolate. “But it doesn't feel like mine. I don't know if I want to sleep there. It's kind of cold. There aren't enough blankets.”

“Isn’t that where you slept while I was in the medbay?”

She shakes her head. “I slept next to you.”

He grins wide above her head and shifts to put his arm around her, and she snuggles closer to him. “You can stay with me,” he says. 

She yawns. “I would like that.”

Finn touches the loops of her hair gently, feeling like his heart is working double time. He wants to preserve this feeling, keep it under glass or in a jar so it won’t get marred or warped.

“Hey,” he says, and Rey tilts her head to look up at him. “Wanna see something cool?”

She nods, yawning again, and he reaches for his datapad. He opens the camera feature, then holds the pad out on front of him.

“Smile!” he says, and Rey frowns.

“What are you doing?”

He pauses. “Taking a picture of us. Look, they’re fun, see?” 

He scrolls through the photos he’s already taken: Poe kneeling on the ground, having a chat with BB-8; Poe smiling at Finn over his own datapad; Jess with her hands posed like two blasters, grinning at him; Poe laughing as Jess teased him about his crush on General Organa; Dr. Kalonia, looking at him sternly during his first apprentice shift in the medbay last week; Poe’s shadow on a bad day, when he’d covered his face and said, “Not today, buddy, I’m sorry,” when Finn had held up his datapad. Among these are pictures and pictures of Finn himself, trying to see his face from every possible angle.

“Why?” asks Rey when he’s finished showing them to her. “What do you do with them?”

Finn shrugs. “You just, um, take them of people you like, or times when you’re having fun, so that way you can remember it if you don’t see the person anymore, or when the good time is over.”

She thinks about that. “I’m not going anywhere. You’ll still see me.”

“Yeah, but - what about when you’re off with Luke or if you start taking on missions? What if I want to see your face when you’re gone?”

He swears he feels her get warmer. “I guess that’s okay,” she says, and he smiles and holds up the datapad again. He realizes after he’s taken the picture that he didn’t remind her to smile, so she’s staring at the camera as if she’s trying to reason out how it works. 

“How was that?” she asks once Finn has lowered the pad. 

“That was good,” says Finn encouragingly. “Now what about one where we smile?”

Rey smiles, but it doesn’t go all the way to her eyes - she’s concentrating too hard, or else she’s humoring him.

“Hey,” he says, without turning. “Guess what?”

“What?” says Rey out of the corner of her mouth.

“I get to see you again tomorrow,” Finn says, grinning. “And the day after that, and the day after that.”

It works: Rey’s smile goes wide and bright, and Finn snaps the picture.

He hands her the datapad so she can look, and he watches her eyebrows rise. “Is that what I look like?” she asks, cocking her head. She touches the screen as if she’ll be able to feel the shape of her face that way, the curve of her smile. “I always thought I looked much more - serious.”

“You look like all of those things,” says Finn, laying the datapad on the table and returning to stroking her hair. “But this” - he taps the screen - “this is how I remember you.”

She presses closer against him, if that’s possible. “I missed you,” she says into his chest, and Finn wants to put  _ this  _ in a jar, this iridescent weightlessness of having her happy and smiling and here against him, bottle it up and keep it as a beacon to light his darker days. 

Poe returns with a second mug and a plate of desserts, and saves Finn from deliberating over whether or not it would be okay to kiss the top of Rey's head. 

“Everyone okay?” he asks, and Finn nods, feels Rey nod against him. 

“Yeah,” says Finn, still smiling. “We're good here.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Fuck, you’re skinny,” says Jess, holding a couple shirts against Rey’s body. “You might need to shrink these down a little. Ask Iolo, he fucks up his laundry all the time, he’ll do yours no problem.” She pulls a pair of leggings from the basket of sartorial odds and ends the pilots have gathered up for Rey, holds them to Rey’s waist, and squints. “These were mine, they might fit … better? They’ll be a little loose, but they’ll be comfortable.”

Rey studies Jess’s body. Jess’s chest is a little fuller than her own, her hips rounder. She's built differently than Poe and Finn - her waist is relatively slim, her middle widening toward her hips, a soft paunch sitting comfortably above her waistband. Jess has a nice shape, she decides. Some of the traders at Niima used to draw curvy shapes in the air when they talked amongst themselves about women - this must have been what they meant. Jess’s full cheeks and chubby belly look much more appealing to Rey than the skin-and-bones look that’s most common on Jakku. 

“Is it a pilot thing?” Rey asks, only a little haltingly. “The … not being skinny?”

Jess laughs, folding the leggings and placing them on Rey’s untouched bed. “Kind of, yeah. We use some supplements - that’s putting it nicely, I guess - to help our bodies keep functioning, you know, on long missions or in antigravity, stuff like that, and that kind of fucks with our metabolisms and appetites. We eat a lot. We’re generally hungry all the time. Plus, you know, we sit down for a living.”

Rey smiles a little. “The General wants to get me trained as a pilot. Really trained, not just in a simulator.”

“Well,” says Jess, grinning back, “I hope you’ve got a good appetite.”

Rey wrinkles her nose. “Not yet.” Poe and Finn are still keeping a close eye on how much she eats, cautioning her against taking too much too soon. She appreciates their concern, but she thinks she’s probably ready to start eating more. 

Jess punches her arm lightly. This is new to Rey, but Jess is still smiling, so she figures it’s okay. Maybe this is how some cultures show friendship or goodwill. She punches Jess back.

Jess laughs. “You’ll get there, don’t worry. Get used to the food first, then work on learning how to  _ actually  _ eat. We’ll help you.”

Rey nods. “So you’re all …” She gestures to Jess’s midsection. “Right?”

“For the most part. Karé not so much, but she has some kind of classified chapter of her life that she can’t tell us about, so I think she might moonlight as an assassin or something, and she’s gotta stay in shape for that. She’ll eat with us sometimes, and she definitely, you know,  _ can _ eat with us. She can put it away. She just works out a ton the next day and most of us … don’t. Or we do in little bits. Poe and I use the rowing machines in the training center sometimes. Iolo likes to run. Snap likes weight training” - Rey nods; Finn’s been doing some weight training, too - “but Karé does the whole like, cardio-endurance-weightlifting deal, it’s nuts. If she’s just finished a mission she’ll usually come and eat, but a lot of the time she just hangs out and drinks weird green smoothies and takes care of Snap.”

Rey pulls a sweater from the basket and mimics Jess’s movements to clumsily fold it into quarters. She’s only met Snap and Karé briefly, but she likes them. Karé looks like she could level Starkiller with one glance - she could easily be an assassin - and welcomed Rey to base with kisses on both cheeks and an embrace that was almost warmer than Finn’s.  _ Little one _ , she had called her, in a way that felt affectionate instead of condescending.

Rey’s first meeting with Snap caught her in the middle of a burst of panic, abruptly on her own as Poe chased Finn to the medbay and the General spun off in a flurry of directions and delegation. She’d looked around her, realized she recognized no one, and suddenly her breathing was coming fast and hard, her head blank and dizzy, the feeling going out of her hands and feet. 

Snap had materialized at her side, his hand on the small of her back, and she immediately sank an elbow into his gut.

“Sorry, sorry,” he’d said, backing away. “Rey, right? You flew the Falcon?”

She’d nodded woodenly, realized she was shaking. It already felt like decades had passed since she’d boarded the ship with Finn.

“Here,” he said, gesturing to an empty chair at some sort of console. “Sit for a second. I know this is a lot. I took a look at the ship with some of the mechanics - you made some real improvements on her.”

His face was swimming before her, and nodding only worsened the sensation.

“Hey,” he said. “Look at me. How many emergency cooling systems are on the Falcon?”

Easy. “Three,” she said around chattering teeth. Most ships had just the one, but a ship the size and age of the Falcon needed extra insurance.

“Good. How many megaunits of fuel does a ship like that use per parsec?”

This one she wasn’t sure about, but she figured Snap might not know the difference if she calculated wrong. “Five.”

“Good. How many steam valves on her?”

She raised her fingers to count on them and realized the feeling was coming back into them. “Twenty-three.”

“Good,” said Snap. “Can you walk me through how you bypassed the compressor? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

She took a deep breath. As she explained, she felt her breathing begin to return to normal, her chest loosening a little. Snap’s face grew clearer in her line of vision, and by the time she had detailed the process to him, she didn’t feel quite as unmoored as she had a few minutes ago. 

“Feel better?” Snap had asked. 

She nodded.

“All right,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get you some water and a protein pack. I’ll show you where the medbay is.”

“Why does she have to take care of him?” Rey asks Jess now. Snap seemed plenty capable during that first encounter.

“Snap and Karé are like, a thing,” says Jess. “They’re together. It’s been a while now, a couple years? They’re queerplatonic.” She glances at Rey as if to gauge her reaction. “Know what that means, hotshot?”  

Rey fishes a thick woolen sock out of the basket and busies herself looking for its mate. “Not exactly.”

“Yeah, most of us weren’t real clear on it at first either. As far as I can tell they’re kind of like … they’re together, they’re like, each other’s person. They hold hands sometimes, kiss sometimes. Sometimes they bunk together. But that’s as far as it goes. They have something they say in Taanabian that means, like, ‘I cherish you’ or something like that? It’s  _ not  _ ‘I love you.’ They’re very specific about that. It’s not a romantic thing or a sexual thing. I mean, they do love each other. Just … not in those ways.”

“Huh,” says Rey, turning that over in her head. “Okay.”

Jess shrugs. “Yeah, it’s a little unusual. Me, I can do without sex, but the no-romance thing would do me in. I’m too much of a sap. But it works for them. They’re happy.” She takes a heavy green shirt out of the basket and shakes it out. It looks to Rey like it could fit her  _ and  _ Jess comfortably, plus Poe and Finn. Jess catches her looking at it wide-eyed. “ _ This _ is from Snap,” she says. “Snap’s big anyway, and he buys everything extra big so he can be comfortable. You can sleep in it, or something. You and, like, the rest of us.”

Rey laughs, taking it from her. She holds it at her shoulders, and it falls almost to her knees. “It’s perfect.”

“And these are from Karé,” says Jess, grinning. She holds up a pair of fingerless gloves. “She knit them for all of us a while back, I guess she thought you should have some too. They won’t keep you warm but you’ll look badass.”

Rey slips them on, wiggles her fingers, and Jess laughs. “You’re killin’ it.”

“Wait,” says Rey, when Jess doesn’t pick the conversation back up. “You didn’t answer me. Why does she have to take care of Snap?”

“Why does she …?” repeats Jess, and Rey can see her tracing back through their conversation in her head. “ _ Oh _ . When we get together, you mean. Sorry, I forgot you wouldn’t know that part.” She picks up a pair of loose pants and begins to fold them. “So I told you we take those supplements to stay awake and alert on long missions. And they fuck up our appetites. So we have a buddy system to deal with that. When you get back from the mission, you take a counterdosage of a different drug, and it knocks you out for a bit while it neutralizes the stimulant. And when you wake up from  _ that _ , you’re super hungry. Haven’t-eaten-in-days hungry.  And you’re a little cloudy from all the drugs, so, you know. You get a buddy. And that way you don’t make yourself sick eating, and you have someone to take care of you while you’re down. And like, of course it depends on who’s on the mission - Starkiller took all of us so that was rough - and who’s free to take care of them when they come back.”

Rey notices that Jess says  _ when _ , not  _ if _ .

“And who you get really depends on when you join up,” Jess continues. “Poe and Karé joined up at the same time, so obviously we weren’t going to pair them up if they were both new. The Republic has drugs too, but theirs are better, the side effects are less severe. But we don’t get those. So they weren’t used to this when they got here. Snap got Karé, that’s how they got close - I guess their relationship is kind of like a long-term version of the buddy system - and I got Poe.”

Rey tries to connect the dots. “So is Poe your … your person too?”

“You mean like, romantically?” Jess asks, and Rey nods.

Jess laughs. “No, no way. I have a person, but her name is Kaydel. You probably know her. She has the two little buns…?” Jess balls up her hands, positions them at the top of her head.

“Oh,” says Rey. “Yes, I know her. She’s nice. She always smiles at me when she sees me.”

“That’s her,” says Jess, grinning. “Yeah. She’s my person, but not my buddy. The buddy thing kind of carries over to our get-togethers too. You eat, you overdo it, you have a buddy to take care of you. So that’s what I mean when I say Karé’s gotta take care of Snap.” She pauses to fix a cardigan whose sleeves are inside out, then clears her throat. “But, you know. If you’re gonna become a pilot, and you’re up for learning … we’re a little short on buddies right now, because of Starkiller. So that would be … that would be cool.”

That bites down on Rey harder than she expects. She’s noticed that loss, while inevitably present on base, doesn’t get discussed much. She’s figured that maybe they’re all used to it by now, but as she watches Jess’s face after she finishes speaking, she thinks:  _ Maybe they never get used to it _ . Jess’s mouth crimps for a moment, her jaw going tight, and as Rey watches from the corner of her eye, she takes a breath, smoothes out her features methodically, closes her eyes. Rey thinks of how long she’s hung onto the loss of her family, how the pain has dulled from a persistent ache in her chest to something that exists, ghostly, in her joints, her bones. She only feels it now when she pushes herself, when she stumbles, but maybe Jess, Poe, the rest of them, maybe they feel it that way too.

She feels like she should maybe hug Jess, at least give her one of the little comforting touches that Poe is so good at. She calculates: Jess’s arms are busy, so a hug might be difficult to get right. She settles for reaching out and patting Jess’s shoulder a couple of times.

Jess turns, a little smile quirking on her lips. “What’s that for?”

Rey pulls her arm back and folds both over her chest. “You know. Because you looked … because you lost your friends. I lost my family. It’s not the same, but it’s still … losing someone.”

Jess puts down the shirt she’s folding, her dark eyes going a little shiny. “Hey, thanks, hotshot,” she says. “Come here, I want to hug you if it’s okay.”

Rey is getting very good at being hugged.


	5. Chapter 5

Finn wakes up in the night and Rey is looking at him, a little smile sitting snug on her lips.

“What?” he asks, bleary. 

Her smile widens. “You  _ do  _ snore,” she says softly. “Not as bad as Luke, though. Not nearly.”

“Do I?” Finn asks, surprised. No one ever mentioned that when he and his squadmates were sleeping shoulder to shoulder in their quarters. Maybe it’s because the air quality on D’Qar is different from the heavily filtered air on his old base, or maybe it just means that his snoring isn’t obtrusive enough to bother anyone.

Rey snuggles closer to him. “You do,” she says, tucking her head beneath his chin. “But it’s okay. I can sleep through yours.”

“Well, good,” says Finn, rubbing her back. “I like having you here. Even when you punch me while you’re dreaming.”

She smacks his arm, and he grins, his chin doubling a little with the motion. “That only happened  _ twice _ . And besides, you sleep like someone hit your kill switch. It’s creepy. It’s a good thing you snore or else I’d think you were dead.”

“Not dead,” says Finn cheerfully, jostling her a little as he rolls flat onto his back. She shifts her arm onto his stomach, palm flat against his t-shirt. 

“You’re soft now,” says Rey, walking her fingers over the bulge of his stomach. “I like it.”

This is the first time she’s acknowledged the weight he’s gained - not a whole lot, maybe ten or fifteen pounds since he first decided he wanted to gain any at all. He’s trimmed his exercise routine down to a day or two a week and takes seconds at every meal now, and the biggest pair of pants he has is starting to get tight around his waist. His sides are starting to push over his waistband, his stomach rounding out a bit more than it used to. 

“Yeah?” he says, carefully neutral. “You like it?”

She nods. “You look so healthy. Like you don’t just have enough, you have  _ more  _ than enough.”

“I like it too,” he admits, and her fingers creep under his shirt. She glances at him as if to ask permission, and he nods. “I really like how it feels. I want to get bigger, I think.”

Her fingers push at his stomach, pinch his skin gently. “How much bigger?”

He feels his face go warm, and he’s grateful that it’s dark. “Maybe like Poe?”

He feels her nod against his chest. “Poe is very soft.”

“Yeah, I know,” Finn says, thinking back to the first time he saw Poe shirtless. He shivers a little. “He looks really good.”

“He looks like he  _ is _ ,” says Rey. “All soft and warm and gentle.”

“Yeah,” says Finn. “He does.” He pauses, stroking at Rey’s hair, looping a finger in one of her buns and tugging at it gently. “What about you?” 

Rey is silent for a moment. “Jess is very beautiful,” she says. “Have you noticed that?”

Finn’s heart feels like it’s been pierced with one of the big serving forks from the mess. It hadn’t occurred to him that Rey might only like girls. Stormtroopers had been a lot more flexible about their preferences. “Yeah, um, she’s pretty.”

“She has …” Rey pauses, motions, and Finn squints through the dark. 

“I can’t see what you’re doing.”

Rey huffs through her nose. “She has a belly. Her legs are chubby like Poe’s. It would take Jess a long time to starve in the desert.”

Finn chokes back a laugh. “Is that a compliment?”

“Of course,” says Rey, only a little impatiently. “I want that. I want to look like I have enough, too. All the clothes everyone gave me are too big, I want them to fit. I want to look like I belong here.”

Finn lets out a breath. “So you don’t want to, like, be with Jess. You just want to look like her.”

“I don’t want to be Jess’s person,” says Rey, like he should know. “She already has a person. I don’t think she wants another.”

Finn holds her a little tighter. He wants to ask if she wants to be his person, but he’s still not quite sure how Rey thinks about relationships, or if she’s even interested in them at all, so he stays quiet. He’ll let her take the lead there. “You do belong here,” he says instead. “Of course you do. We both do.”

She squishes some of his belly between her fingers. “I know. It’s very strange. I’ve never belonged anywhere.”

His heart pulls tight like drawstrings. He knows she’s still struggling with this new world, can see it in the way she hesitates with new foods and questions she isn’t sure of the answers to. He knows that feeling, like any misstep might rip through the illusion that they’re welcome here. Her first night back on base, he watched her scratch a tick mark into the wall with a butter knife he recognized from the mess hall. She must have taken that too, he thought, along with her disaster rations.

“What are you doing?” he’d asked, and he watched her eyes shift from his face to the knife in her hand. Her shoulders tensed, and her mouth pinched, and when she finally replied, her voice was unsteadily defensive.

“This way,” she said, “I know today was real.”

He’d felt for her viscerally then, a sharp, juddering slice through his chest to mirror the lightsaber scar down his back. That ache flares up again now, Rey a match to the flint in his heart as she crowds herself against him, trying to push herself into belonging.

He shifts so he can kiss the top of her head, and she looks up at him, surprised. “What was that for?”

He shrugs the shoulder she’s lying against. “I felt like it. Did you not like it? I won’t do it again if you don’t like it.”

“No,” she says, reaching up to touch the spot he kissed like she might still be able to feel it. “I did.”

His chest goes warm, gold. “Okay then,” he says, and this time, when she snuggles closer to him, she grabs his hand and doesn’t let go.


	6. Chapter 6

The pilots’ next holo night is held in Iolo’s quarters. Rey sticks close to Poe and Finn at first - she feels strange about being in people’s spaces when she doesn’t know them well. She’s hung out in Jess’s room a couple of times and that’s starting to feel less weird, but she hasn’t spoken to Iolo one-to-one, just within the larger group of them. 

There’s a makeshift long table made of upside-down supply crates lined up along one wall of Iolo’s room, and it’s loaded with food. Some of it looks familiar, like the foods she’s getting used to in the mess hall, but some of it is still foreign.

“I remember this stuff,” says Finn, pointing. “Look, those are the amber-root chips I told you about. They’re so good. These are candies, like sweets, they’re great too. Um, I thought this stuff was gross but try it anyway, maybe you’ll like it. Oh! Look at this. You know the hot chocolate in the mess? This is chocolate too, it’s just solid. You’ll like that.”

He looks pretty proud of himself for being able to teach her these things, and Rey feels a fond pink glow creep over her as she lets him dump a handful of foil-wrapped chocolates onto her plate, beside a heap of colorful, squishy-looking candies. She takes a squishy one to chew on while he’s describing everything to her. She’s dubious of its color, a fuchsia that’s too garish to be natural. Ordinarily she wouldn’t trust anything that color, but Finn put it on her plate, so it must be safe. She puts it into her mouth, and she’s surprised by how good it tastes, sour and sweet at the same time.

“Why don’t they have all this in the mess?” she asks, popping a bright green candy into her mouth, and Poe laughs. 

“Because it’s not good for you,” he says, bumping his hip against hers. “It’s junk food. There aren’t a lot of nutrients in it.”

She finishes chewing and swallows. “Junk food,” she says, turning the phrase over in her mouth. “It’s not good for you?”

“I mean, it won’t  _ hurt  _ you,” says Poe, taking two of the little cakes Finn had said he didn’t like. Rey takes two as well. “It’s just a lot of extra sugar and fat. There aren’t vitamins or protein in it or anything.”

Rey frowns. “Why do you eat it, then?”

Poe shrugs. “It tastes good.”

This is still new to Rey, the idea of eating not simply to survive, but to enjoy the taste. It’s an idea she can get behind, sure - the food on base is light years more fun to explore than it was back on Jakku. But it’s strange to her that people have invented food with no nutritional value, just for the sake of enjoying a flavor.

She settles herself between Poe and Finn, their backs against the wall, and places a square of chocolate on her tongue. “ _ Oh _ ,” she says, and both of them turn to look at her.

“You like it?” says Finn eagerly, and she nods emphatically. 

“And this is bad for you,” she says around the chocolate, to confirm.

“Well,” says Poe, “it’s not  _ nutritious.  _ It would be bad if you  _ only  _ ate chocolate. That wouldn’t be healthy. But if you’re getting enough nutrients and everything, you can have as much chocolate as you want.” He smiles. “You might just get a little chubby, is all.”

“That doesn’t bother me,” says Rey, picking up one of the cakes Finn doesn’t like. “What’s this?”

“It’s gross,” says Finn from her other side. “It’s so sweet it made my teeth hurt.”

“It’s pastry,” says Poe, covering his mouth as he chews. “It’s got honey, some nuts, a lot of spices. It’s not for everyone.”

She takes a bite. It  _ is  _ very sweet, but she doesn’t find it unpleasant. She likes the texture of the pastry against the nuts, and something about the flavor of the spices is familiar, comforting. “ _ I  _ like it,” she says to Finn. “It doesn’t make my teeth hurt.”

He makes a face. “You can have my share.” 

“Gladly,” she says, nudging her shoulder against his as Iolo and Jess make their way over, their own plates piled with food.

Iolo greets Rey with a wide grin and points to her shirt.  “Hey, that was mine!” he says. “You like it?”

Rey pulls the hem of the shirt away from her waist to inspect it. Like some of the other shirts in her basket, this shirt has  _ stuff  _ on it - images and text that apparently have cultural significance. She hasn’t wrapped her head around all of it yet. This one has several different xenos emblazoned on it, and the words  _ The New Hopes  _ are superimposed over the xenos’ faces in spiky purple letters. The fabric itself is soft, but the images are cracked and a little faded, rough under her fingers. “I do like it. Did you want it back?”

“No, no, it’s yours!” he says, getting comfortable next to Jess on Poe’s other side. “It doesn’t fit me anymore.” He rubs a hand over his belly, which protrudes more than Finn’s but less than Poe’s. “But I’m glad it’s got a good home with you!”

“What does it mean?” asks Rey, and Iolo’s large violet eyes go even wider. 

“Right, I guess you don’t -  the New Hopes are a band. Like a music band, on the radio.” He looks at her expectantly.

“I know what a radio is,” says Rey, defensive. “They used to play music at the market sometimes.”

“Okay, well,” says Iolo, “some bands get really popular, and they play concerts where you can go and see them live on the urban planets. And if you’re like me, you buy t-shirts to commemorate the experience.”

Rey thinks about this. Most of the songs she knows are folk songs, songs she’s heard in different iterations over the course of years at Niima Outpost. Her notion of popular songs is probably decades out of date.

“You should show me good bands,” she says, and he nods.

“Oh, trust me, by the time you’ve been here a month or two you’ll know all the words to at least one New Hopes album.” He grins, teeth white against his dark skin. “I got Jess hooked on them too when we first joined up.”

Jess elbows him. “Like I had a choice when you were playing them nonstop one room over. It was get into them or lose my mind.”

Finn shifts beside Rey and leans so that he can see Poe, Jess, and Iolo. “What’s the holo tonight? Is it another scary one?”

“Nope!” says Iolo. “My turn to pick. No shitty special effects ghosts this time.” Jess elbows him again. ”This one’s an action holo, it’s called  _ One Rogue _ . It’s a little suspenseful but it isn’t scary. It won’t make you jump.”

Finn sits back. “That sounds good.” He turns to Rey. “The last one had a lot of parts that, like, the holo got really quiet and then the ghost jumped out and the music got loud? It was spooky.”

Rey wrinkles her nose. “I don’t like that.”

Finn shrugs. “You get used to it after a couple of times,” he says, and she smiles a little, because he acts like watching one ghost holo makes him a seasoned pro. “Poe let me hold his hand when I got scared.”

This pulls something tight in Rey’s chest. She likes Poe, and she wouldn’t mind holding his hand. Holding hands is nice, she’s discovered. It makes her feel safe, having someone to hang onto. She doesn’t see it as a particularly romantic gesture, and certainly not as a marker of a sexual partner, but the more time she spends on base, the more she’s realizing that … maybe everyone else does see it that way. She doesn’t know what it means that Poe is offering to hold Finn’s hand, but something inside her jerks at the thought of Finn and Poe disrupting their unofficial trio to pair off with each other. She likes the three of them as a unit, and she does not like the looming, irrational certainty in her brain that tells her they will eventually leave her behind.  _ You’re wrong _ , she tells herself.  _ They are loyal. They won’t desert you _ .

Even so, she hooks her arms through theirs and spreads her stance a little wider, getting as close as she can to each of them.

“Hey,” says Poe, tilting his head onto her shoulder for a moment. “You okay?”

She nods. “I’m fine. I just wanted to be near you.”

Something ignites behind Poe’s eyes, and he looks at her through his dark eyelashes, smile earnest. “You’re sweet. Can I kiss your cheek? Is that okay?”

“It’s okay,” she says, smiling a little, and he leans over, one hand steadying his plate in his lap. His lips are warm and dry, and when he sits back from her his cheeks are a little pink. 

Finn catches their exchange, and in her periphery she sees him beam. He scoots himself closer, and she turns her face so that he can kiss her other cheek. He lingers a moment, making a little  _ mmm  _ sound as he kisses her, and for some reason that makes  _ her  _ cheeks go pink.

She settles between them and unlinks their arms so she can eat. As she’s crunching through her first mouthful of amber-root chips (which, she decides, Finn is absolutely right about), the door to Iolo’s room swings open, and Snap and Karé amble in, each hauling a clinking case of bottles.

“Special treat tonight,” Snap announces, tilting his head toward Karé, “because our girl here scored some booze on her supply run.”

The rest of the room whoops.  

Rey mouths the word  _ booze _ , and Jess catches her eye.

“Alcohol,” she says, and Rey nods in understanding. “Have you ever tried that, hotshot?”

“Once,” she says. “Whiskey from the market, just to see what it was like.”

“What  _ was _ it like?” asks Finn. “We weren’t allowed.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t like it. It burned my throat and I couldn’t hear for a couple of days.”

“What the fuck,” says Jess, eyes wide, and when Rey looks around, the rest of them are wearing similar expressions of deep concern. “Okay, I promise our booze is not like that. This is just beer, which isn’t even that strong.”

“What happened?” asks Karé, dropping down beside Finn while Snap begins doling out beer bottles. She holds out her fist to him, and he gently bumps it with his own. “Hey, Rey, everyone. What’s going on?”

“Rey was just telling us about some horrifying experience she had with some whiskey on Jakku that made her go temporarily deaf,” says Jess, reaching over to press her palm against Karé’s in greeting. 

Karé looks at Rey. “The dark green stuff? Smells like engine grease?”

Rey grins. “That’s the one.”

Karé nods. “Yeah, that’ll fuck you up good. Outer Rim liquor is wild.” 

Snap makes his way over, hefting one of the beer cases on his hip. “Any takers?”

Poe stretches a hand up, and Snap presses a bottle into his palm. “Rey? Finn?”

Rey and Finn look at each other. 

“You said we won’t go deaf, right?” says Finn, aiming the comment down to Jess. She shakes her head and gives him a thumbs-up, and Snap squints down at them.

“If you go deaf from one of these,” says Snap, “it’ll be a real feat of nature, because they’re like five percent alcohol. But it’s fine if you don’t want one. Entirely up to you.”

“Let’s share one,” says Finn, and Rey nods. 

“Knock yourselves out,” says Snap good-naturedly. “There’ll be more if you want your own later.” 

Finn takes the bottle and goes to open it, then stops. “I don’t think I can do this with my hands.”

“I’ve got it,” says Rey, and she brings it to her mouth. Every once in a red moon she’d trade for bottled water, and those were sealed just like these.

“Hey, hey,” says Poe, catching her arm. “You don’t have to … you’re gonna kill your teeth like that. Here, let me see.”

She hands him the bottle and he levers off the cap with a little tool. “Now you’re set,” he says, handing it back.

“Thanks,” she says, and he holds his bottle out to her.

“Touch them together, it’s good luck.”

She taps hers against his, and takes a swig when he does. The beer is cold and bitter, a tiny note of sweetness lingering at the end, and she puckers her mouth before handing the bottle to Finn. He makes a similar face after he takes his own sip. 

“Not a beer fan?” asks Poe, laughing. 

Finn shrugs. “It’s not what I was expecting. It’s okay.”

“I kind of like it,” says Rey, taking another sip. 

“At the Academy,” says Poe, “we used to see who could chug - drink - bottles the fastest, because the faster you drink it the faster it hits you, and the faster you feel drunk. But I wouldn’t recommend that if this is your first time. Just go slow.”

Jess leans over and swats at Poe’s knee. “Wait, I wanna see if I can drink faster than you. I used to be a champ at this at the Academy.”

He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “One, for old times’ sake.”

“Yessssssss,” drawls Jess. “Iolo, say when.”

Iolo counts down from three, and Jess and Poe tip their bottles back. Finn rests his chin on Rey’s shoulder, and together they watch Poe’s throat move as he takes gulp after gulp of beer, one hand pressed to his stomach. 

Jess slams down her bottle first and grins. “ _ Still  _ a champion.”

Poe finishes his bottle and lets out a rumbling burp. “I admit defeat,” he says, prodding at his belly. “Stars, I haven’t done that in years.” He shifts his weight and burps again. “Ugh, I’ve gotta eat something. I don’t drink enough anymore to just chug beers like it’s nothing.”

He pulls his plate toward him, and Rey feels Finn squirm next to her. 

Snap hits the lights and comes to sit beside Karé, two plates of food in his hands, and Karé arranges his legs so that she can sit between them, leaning back against his sizable belly. He’s taller and heavier than Poe, and Rey is endeared by the contrast between Karé’s muscular build and Snap’s pillowy one.

“What are we watching?” Karé asks softly, and Finn repeats the title to her. She nods, then takes a handful of candies from her plate and twists to offer them to Snap, holding one to his lips. He eats it from her fingers, and Rey is instantly interested.

She unwraps a chocolate from her own plate and glances between Poe and Finn. Poe’s mouth is full, a second bite ready in his hand, but Finn’s is empty. She turns to him and holds the chocolate to his lips, and his brow furrows.

“What about it?” 

“It’s for you,” she says, and suddenly it feels awkward. It didn’t look awkward between Karé and Snap. “Eat it.”

Finn blinks. “Yeah?” he says, his voice a little breathy. “Out of your - ?”

“Why not?” she says, a little defensive, and he shakes his head and eats it from her hand.

She watches him chew and swallow, his big eyes wide, and she smiles. “Good,” she says. 

Finn nods. “Yeah,” he says, in that same breathy voice. “Good.”

She picks up a second chocolate and unwraps it. “You can have another.”

He pushes a little closer to her, squeezing her against Poe, who looks over to see what’s going on. “You guys good?” he asks under the sound of the holo, and Rey opens another chocolate. 

“Yes,” she says, bringing it to Poe’s mouth. “Here.”

“Thank you,” he says, his voice pleasantly surprised. “Are you feeding us now, instead of the other way around?”

“I could,” she says, and she finds that she likes the idea. Providing for them, taking care of them, keeping them fed. It makes her feel like she has a sort of family with them, or at the very least a pack.

Poe grins. “I’m not gonna turn you down. And I don’t think Finn is either. But - and I don’t want you to take this the wrong way - usually when you get together with people to watch a holo, the custom is to be quiet so everyone can hear what’s happening. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” he adds. “It’s just, um, what you do. If you have something to say, you say it very quietly.”

Rey nods, her face going warm with embarrassment. She looks down at her plate, picks apart one of her cakes until it’s torn into bite-sized pieces. 

She tries to concentrate on the holo, but things keep catching in the periphery of her senses: the periodic movement of Poe’s arm as he sips from his second beer, the rustle of Snap and Karé moving around and tucking themselves against each other, the clink of Jess and Iolo’s bottles against the floor, the soft expressive noises Finn makes when he eats. Rey wishes she could dial those senses down sometimes, force her body to understand as well as her mind that she doesn’t have to be on constant alert in situations like this, but it’s slow going unlearning sixteen years of survival instincts.

She looks over at Karé and Snap. Karé is reclining further against Snap now, letting him bring lazy forkfuls to her lips, and Rey remembers that Snap mentioned she’d just come from a mission. She wonders if Karé is coming down from the stimulants Jess told her about, or if this is just one of the nights she’s decided to eat with them. On her other side, Jess and Iolo are passing each other seconds. 

Rey takes a sip of her beer and turns to Finn, watching his hand move methodically from plate to mouth and back. His gaze is fixed on the screen, but every now and then he’ll close his eyes and sigh with pleasure after he takes a bite. He’s almost finished with his plate already, eating with abandon. None of the  _ go slow, don’t make yourself sick  _ warnings that she’s supposed to abide by indefinitely.

She leans back a little and glances at Poe, and as her eyes land on him, he gestures for Iolo to fill another plate for him and hand it down. Once it’s in his hands, he digs in right away, and she hears him stifle a burp between bites. Finn turns at the sound, and passes his plate to her, nodding toward the food. She passes it to Poe.

Her own plate is still pretty full, and she decides that tonight, she’s going to eat as much as she wants. She’s been here long enough that her body’s had enough time to get used to the food. 

She unwraps two chocolates and puts them both in her mouth at once, rolling them around with her tongue. She likes the sensation of having her mouth full, knowing that she doesn’t have to ration bites to make her meal feel like more food than it is. 

She keeps eating, making herself appreciate the flavors since that’s all this food is good for, apparently. She chases a handful of amber-root chips with a couple more chocolates and finds that they complement each other well. She alternates handfuls of each until they’re gone, then alternates the chewy candies with the crunchy ones. Part of her wants to try chugging her beer the way Poe and Jess did, just to see what it feels like, but she holds off. It’s Finn’s beer too, even if he’s not touching it. Instead, she sips at it, and aside from feeling a little warmer and fuzzier after she finishes half of it, she finds it doesn’t affect her much. 

She cleans her plate and waits a moment to see if she feels sick. Nope - she feels fine, content. She could eat more if she wanted to, she thinks. 

She hooks her chin on Poe’s shoulder, and he turns to look at her. “Everything okay?” he whispers.

“Yes,” she says, keeping her voice as soft as possible. “Can you ask Iolo to fill another plate for me?”

He looks a little surprised. “Sure, are you still hungry?”

Rey nods. 

“Is there anything you didn’t like?”

She shakes her head. “No, everything was good.”

“Okay then.” He hands her plate down and tilts his head toward Rey, and Iolo nods, wincing as he moves to turn toward the food.

“Is he okay?” Rey whispers.

Poe nods. “He’s just full.”

When Rey’s plate comes back, Poe grins down the line and passes his own empty one. Rey stares.

“ _ More _ ?”

He pats his round belly. “I can fit a lot in here.”

On her other side, Finn pushes his empty plate into her lap. “I’m ready for more too.”

Rey huffs a little and sits back with her plate. She shoves three gummy anoobas into her mouth at once and chews indignantly. Just when she thinks she’s finally catching up to them -  _ ugh _ . 

Finn attacks his third plate with gusto, and she can’t help but be a little fascinated watching him eat. He’s clearly enjoying the food, and in the back of her mind she knows he’s also trying to put on weight, so it makes sense that he’s eating more. She wonders if Poe is trying to gain weight too. Maybe he wants to get as big as Snap. 

She moves through her second plate more slowly, starting to feel herself get full. It’s a pleasant feeling, soft and satisfied, and she wants to know if it’ll only become more pleasant the more she eats, if eating three plates of food the way Poe and Finn can will bring her some kind of euphoric satiation. Her stomach feels warm now, a little snug, and she imagines that feeling deepening until it envelops her, sleepy and soothing. 

On her right, Finn burps, then follows the sound with a groan. He shifts his weight beside her, cradling his belly. She looks at him expectantly, and he hiccups.

“This is a lot of food,” he says softly, and she shifts her plate in her lap so she can put a hand on his belly. It’s round and taut under the softness, and she prods at it gently until he burps again.

“Sorry,” she whispers, and he shakes his head.

“You don’t have too much left,” she says, glancing at his plate. “Only a few bites.”

He nods, rubbing his hand over his belly. “I know. But I’m so full.”

An idea breaks over Rey, as cool and jolting as the surprise of her first rainfall on base. She moves a little closer to Finn. “I could feed them to you,” she whispers. “Would that make it easier?”

His eyes go wide. “Uh, yeah, I think so.”

She takes his fork from him and pushes some of the soft sweet stuff onto it. There can’t be more than five or six bites left on his plate, but she decides she’ll go slow with him, so he doesn’t get sick. He opens his mouth and lets her feed him, and as he chews he lets out a little moan. His eyes are getting a little droopy.

“Good job,” she whispers, and he hiccups again. 

“Poe’s still eating,” he says quietly, nodding over her shoulder. “I don’t know how he does it.”

“Me either,” she says. “I want to do that, but I don’t know how either.”

But she’s thinking about the stash of food in her room, the nonperishables she’s been stockpiling after meals. She’s full enough now that if she makes a dent in her supply, she’ll probably be able to at least eat as much as Finn. But, she thinks, she’d rather do it on her own than with Poe or Finn hovering over her, warning her not to make herself sick.

Well - Finn doesn’t look like he’s going to be able to stay awake until the end of the movie, much less afterward, so maybe she can just put him to bed and slide under the covers with him later. Poe has never made any mention of sleeping with either of them, so he probably won’t interfere with her plans either.

She feeds Finn another bite off his plate, and he makes a soft sleepy noise that makes her thrill inside. She’ll finally be able to know how good this feels. She won’t be the odd one out anymore.

By the time Finn’s plate is clean, he’s leaning against her, nearly dozing, and Poe is starting to slump on her other side as well. Poe is still nursing a beer, and she can feel the soft jiggle of his sides against her each time he hiccups. 

When the lights come back on after the movie, Rey observes the rest of the pilots. Iolo has his head in Jess’s lap, and he’s idly rubbing his belly as she plays with his curly dark hair. Jess is flushed, her belly pushing against her t-shirt, a sliver of creamy skin visible between the hem and the waistband of her leggings. Karé’s belly is bloated too, a hard bump under her tank top where her stomach is usually flat. She and Snap have quite a few empty plates stacked in front of them. He’s slumped low against the wall, Karé propped against him, and he has one big hand moving over her stomach. Her head lolls back against his chest, and Rey is envious of how content and comfortable they look together.

Karé catches her watching, smiles and wiggles her fingers at her. “How was your first time, little one?”

Rey palms her belly. “Good. I had two plates, I think I’m full.”

“Good,” says Karé. “Me too.”

Rey turns to Finn, who’s leaning back on one hand and rubbing his stomach with the other. “How are you feeling?” she whispers, and he nods slowly, eyes closed.

“I am so full,” he whispers back. “I think I like it a little more now than I did.” He covers his mouth against a burp. “I like knowing that it’s helping me get bigger. But I also really want to lie down and sleep this off.”

With some effort, Poe shifts himself beside her to look at them. “How’d you guys do?”

“I’m good,” says Rey. “Finn’s falling asleep.”

Finn nods, eyelids heavy, and Poe grins. “That happens sometimes. I’d offer to help you to bed, but I’m not sure I can make it myself.”

Rey nudges their shoulders with her own. “Maybe I should levitate you,” she teases.

Poe laughs. “I feel like there’s probably a weight limit on that.”

“I’ve only really levitated tools,” she admits. “And a couple of smallish rocks.”

“Yeah, I think my fat ass might be a little more difficult to get off the ground.” He hooks an arm around her shoulders and Finn follows suit, and she braces them as they ease to their feet. 

“Heading out?” Iolo asks from Jess’s lap.

“You better,” says Jess. “Padawan’s falling asleep standing up over there. You okay, buddy?”

Finn nods through a yawn. “Yeah. Overdid it a little, that’s all.”

“What about you, hotshot?” Jess asks, reaching out to press her palm against Rey’s the way she did with Karé earler. “You good?”

“ _ Hotshot _ ?” Poe repeats. He pauses to catch a belch behind his hand. “You used to call me hotshot.”

Rey’s stomach gives a warm little swoop. She’s still new to affectionate nicknames, but she thinks she likes them, and she particularly likes that this one is tied to Poe. 

Jess grins. “You’re old news now, Dameron. It’s her turn.”

Poe reaches down to tousle Jess’s hair. “Fair enough. You need someone to help you home, Testor?”

“Nah, Kaydel’s coming by in a while,” she says, stifling a burp. “And besides, I left some room. She has some desserts in her quarters that we’re gonna play around with.” She smirks. “She likes when I can’t move.”

This strikes Rey as suddenly, immensely appealing. The idea of having someone to take care of her when she’s too full to move feels so incredibly safe to her, the pinnacle of security and comfort.

She’ll try being full on her own first, she tells herself. Just to make sure she really likes it. And the next time she’ll have Finn and Poe look after her.

“Let’s get you to bed first,” says Poe, tapping Finn’s shoulder. “You don’t feel sick at all?”

Finn shakes his head. “Nope. Just real full and sleepy. It feels nice, but I really want to lie down.”

“That happens at first when you start pushing yourself,” says Poe. “You’ll get used to it if you keep eating like this.”

They let Finn lean on them while he brushes his teeth, and both of them kiss him on the forehead before putting him to bed. He grabs for Rey’s hand as she turns to leave.

“Are you coming back?”

“I am,” she says. “I’m going to help Poe and I’ll be back after that. You don’t have to wait up for me, sleep if you want.”

He gives her a drowsy smile. “I don’t think I have a choice. As soon as I close my eyes, I’m gonna be out.”

“Sleep well,” she says, squeezing his hand. 

Poe is getting a little sleepier too, his eyelids a little heavier, his movements a little clumsier. When BB-8 whistles a greeting from eir charging port, it takes Poe a couple tries to make contact with the top of the droid’s head.

He settles on his back in bed, punching his two pillows into shape behind him so that he’s propped up a little, and lets out a long, low burp, then a sigh. “That’s better,” he murmurs, smoothing a hand over the mound of his stomach. “How did you like it tonight, hmm? Did you have enough to eat?”

Rey nods, squirms a little. “Yeah, I did. I liked it. Everyone is nice.”

He smiles. “Mhm, they are. They like you a lot. I’m glad you’re settling in.”

“Me too,” she says, and she works up the nerve to push one of his curls off his forehead. His smile widens.

“You’re going to sleep with Finn?”

“Yeah. I thought I would still like sleeping alone even when it wasn’t my only option, but it turns out that sleeping with other people is nice too. And Finn hates sleeping alone, so it works out really nicely for us.” She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you like sleeping alone?”

He nods. “Sometimes. You and Finn are always welcome in here, too. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I wouldn’t mind the company.”

She grins at the thought of the three of them piled into one of the little base-issued beds, warm and cozy and safe. All three of them, no one left out. “I would like that. I think Finn would too.”

“Good,” he says. “Let’s keep that in mind. Sleep well.”

“You too.” BB-8 chirrups softly, and she turns to em and smiles. “Yes, you too. Do you want the lights off?” she adds, pausing by the switch.

“No, I’m going to read for a while, you can just dim ‘em,” he says, and she nods and leaves him to it.

Once she’s alone, she realizes her heart is racing with the thrill of what she’s about to do, and she’s so warm with anticipation that the chill of her room doesn’t bother her like it usually does. 

She gathers her stockpile from the bureau drawer, gets onto her bed, and lays it all out on her unused duvet: several bread rolls and pastries still free of moldy spots; a few hunks of hard cheese; strips of dried meat that she likes because she can chew on them for a while; and some vegetables and fruits that are still firm; and a disproportionate number of cookies, because even stale they taste like luxury. 

She's so excited to begin that she forgets, until the first bite of cheese hits her stomach, that she's already eaten quite a bit tonight.  _ It's fine _ , she tells herself.  _ You don't have that much here, you'll have just enough.  _

She tears the cheese and meat into pieces and eats them together in little bites, the way she’s seen Poe do in the mess. Even after weeks on base, the richness of even simple foods is enough to make her swoon - the salty meat and milky cheese alone are enough to make her feel like she’s eating like royalty. 

The fruits and vegetables have gotten a little bruised and wilted in the cache in her bureau drawer, but they still taste fresh enough to be exciting. She’s seen Jess complain before about the texture of vegetables that aren’t in season, the sourness of fruit that isn’t completely ripe, but these imperfections are indistinguishable to Rey. 

Her stomach is beginning to feel taut as she finishes her last bites of fruit, and she can see it starting to bloat a little when she lifts her shirt. She angles herself toward the mirror, tucks the hem of her shirt under her chin, turns in profile, and grins at herself, at the tiny bulge of her belly.

The pastries and bread are a little harder to work through, her jaw tired from crunching and chewing two plates of new foods, but she manages to get it all down. She's starting to feel heavier, slower, sleepier. Her body is sending her firm  _ not hungry  _ signals, and it’s getting more difficult to talk herself into taking another bite, but she keeps pushing through her collection of cookies. She can do this. She’s made it this far, it would be stupid to quit now.

She pushes cookie after cookie into her mouth, chewing and swallowing mechanically, and when she finally finishes, she lies back, panting, a dull ache spreading through her stomach. She rubs at her belly like she’s seen Poe and Finn do, but it doesn’t help, just pushes out a burp that hurts more than she expects it to. She whimpers and tries to sit up, thinking that might help her stomach settle, but instead the movement elicits a cramp so hard and sudden it makes her gasp.

She lies on her back, breathing shallowly, stomach roiling and pinching, trying to work out what she did wrong. This isn’t supposed to hurt. Although her stomach is upset, she doesn’t think she’s going to throw up, like Finn said he did, so it can’t be the same kind of sick. 

Unless -

She thinks back to a few years ago, the last time she’d traded for canned goods and bottled water at Niima, how she’d gotten some kind of parasite - the healer at Niima wasn’t specific about which - that had made her stomach swell just like this, had caused her so much pain she could barely think, doubled over on her speeder trying to make it to town for help. The healer had charged her enough portions to keep her alive for a month, had given her a dose of white liquid that had made her shake and vomit and convulse and sweat out what felt like every drop of water she’d ever consumed. As the cramp in her stomach spreads, her mind locks onto the memory of that pain, maps it out until she can imagine this discomfort becoming that dire.

With some difficulty, she pulls herself upright, whining at the nausea that laps at her as the contents of her stomach shifts. She doesn’t know what to do, if they even have the same kind of medicine on base, if this kind of parasite is still curable here.

She manages to stand up, her stomach bowing out in front of her uncomfortably, and slowly she makes it down the hall to Poe’s room, relief bursting in her chest when she sees that there’s still a tiny bit of light bleeding out from under his door. She pauses against the doorframe to catch her breath, and then knocks. 

There’s a pause, and then Poe calls, “Yeah?”

She cracks open the door and looks in at him. He looks so cozy and comfortable, the light from his datapad casting a soft glow on his face, and she hates that she’s interrupting this for him, encroaching on his time to ask for his help.

“Oh, hey,” he says, smiling, and then he squints at her, and his face creases with worry. “Hey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

The cramp bites down on her again. “I think I ate something bad,” she says, and she’s a little afraid of how thin her voice sounds when she speaks.

“Come here,” says Poe, shoving his blankets aside. He braces his belly with one hand as he stands up, and she remembers that he’s full too, that he did what she tried to do and he  _ succeeded  _ where she didn’t. She moves toward him slowly, and he meets her halfway, putting a protective arm around her and leading her to his bed.

“Tell me what happened,  _ querida _ ,” he says, taking her hand as she tries to find a position that doesn’t hurt her swollen belly. Her head is too cloudy with panic to ask what  _ querida  _ means - she understands a fair amount of Yberian, but this isn’t in her vocabulary. “Where does it hurt?”

She touches her stomach, and he looks at her for permission before putting his hand on it too. He feels around, and she winces when he presses down on her skin, trying to quell the humming terror of having to endure the medication’s effects again.

“I wanted to eat like you and Finn,” she says, her voice small. “So after I put you to bed, I … I went back to my room and I had some food there, just in case, for emergencies, and it felt really good for a while. But then I finished it and it started hurting so I think something must have been bad and I didn’t realize.”

“How much did you eat?” he asks, rubbing gently at her stomach.

As she counts things off on her fingers, she watches his face smooth out a little. Another cramp rolls through her stomach, and she squeezes his hand. 

“Is it something bad? I had a parasite once on Jakku. It felt just like this, my stomach swelled and it hurt and it got  _ so much worse _ and there was a terrible medicine I had to take and I thought I was going to die.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” he says gently, and she blinks at him. “I think you just ate too much.”

Her terror recedes momentarily, but the spell is broken by another painful burp pushing its way up from her stomach, and she curls into herself again. “That doesn’t make sense. You and Finn can eat more than this and  _ you  _ don’t feel like this.”

“Because we’ve worked up to eating like that,” he says, smoothing her hair back. “If you eat a lot of big meals, your body gets used to it. Your stomach stretches and you can handle more food at once. But the first time, it does hurt like this if you push yourself too far. It takes a little while to get used to it.”

“That’s not fair,” she says, indignation prickling in her chest. “You  _ need  _ food. Why does your body punish you for having too much?”

He laughs a little. “I don’t know,  _ querida _ . That’s the way it is. But I promise you don’t have a parasite. You aren’t going to die. This is very, very normal. It ‘s happened to me, it’s happened to Jess, it’s happened to everyone. You’re going to be just fine. Maybe a little sensitive tomorrow, but good as new in a day or so.” He leans over with a little  _ oof  _ and rummages through his bedside drawer for something. “Here, if we snap this in half it’ll get hot and you can put it on your belly. It’ll help the cramps loosen up.”

She snaps the little fabric packet in half and holds it to her stomach, and immediately it feels a little better. Poe helps her reposition so that she’s in his arms, both of them leaning upright against his headboard, and she snuggles closer to the plush, comforting warmth of his body. 

“Did it happen to Finn?” she asks, and she feels him shrug. 

“Finn got really sick the first time he ate even a little food here, so he was really careful afterward. He increased the size of his meals really gradually so he wouldn’t shock his body like that again. So no, he didn’t get sick quite like this, but he did get sick.”

“Does it ever happen to you, still?”

He takes a breath. “Sometimes,” he says. “When I’m very sad, or very lonely. I’m usually good about stopping before I hurt myself, but sometimes when your head isn’t feeling well, it’s harder to tell.”

He sounds very young as he admits this, his voice cracked open. She takes one hand off her heat pack and gropes for his so she can squeeze it. 

“I’m here when you get sad or lonely,” she says. “So is Finn. We can look after you.”

He kisses her shoulder. “Thank you. That means a lot. And you can always come to me too, like now. I’m here.”

“Thank you,” she says softly. There’s a moment where they’re both silent, and then she asks, “What does  _ querida  _ mean?”

“It’s an endearment,” he says. “Like sweetheart, or darling, or dearest. Is that all right?”

She nods against his chest, feeling like her whole body is flushing. “I like that.”

“Good,” he says, and then there’s a creak as the door opens, and Finn peers in, bleary-eyed.

“Hey,” he says, his voice husky with sleep. “Is everything okay?”

Poe motions him in, and Rey can’t help but smile when she sees that he has a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He huddles up next to them on Poe’s mattress, his forehead pinched.

“Are you okay?” he asks Rey, taking in her swollen belly and heat pack. “I woke up and you still weren’t back, so I went to look for you, and your lights were on but you weren’t in your room …”

“I’m okay,” she says. “I just did something stupid.”

Poe makes a little sound of disagreement behind her, and Finn shakes his head. “I'm sure that's not true. What did you do?”

She makes a face. “I went back to my room and ate everything I had been keeping for emergencies to see if I could eat as much as you and Poe. But if you eat too much sometimes it makes you feel bad, but I didn’t know that, so I thought I had some kind of awful parasite. And I didn’t want to wake you and Poe’s lights were still on, so … he gave me a heat pack and now I don’t feel like I’m dying.”

Finn’s sleepy eyes are wide. “Well, good,” he says. “I’m sorry that happened to you. You could have woken me up!”

“You were so tired,” she says, balancing the heat pack on her belly and reaching for his hand. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“You never disturb me,” he says, and she feels like she did when Poe explained  _ querida  _ to her, full of a warmth and affection that’s too big for her body. “Do you want to come back to bed, or are you staying here?”

“Stay here,” says Poe, before she can reply. “Both of you, if you want. We can fit. Keep Rey warm and comfy.”

Finn is nodding before Poe has even finished speaking. “I want to stay.”

“Perfect,” says Poe. “Come on Rey’s other side, hmm? Here, I’ll fix the pillows.”

Rey lets them get settled, clutching the heat pack to her middle as they jostle on either side of her. It’s a tight squeeze. She can feel Poe’s gut pressed up against her side, and one of Finn’s strong arms is draped protectively over her chest. 

She likes this very much, she decides. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Finn tries his best to track their progression into a triad from that first night sharing a bed, but it’s a tough trajectory to follow, since they fall into a deeper relationship more so than they decide to begin one. Poe reaches for their hands more often since they began sleeping in the same bed, is more generous than usual with his hugs and casual touches. He develops a liking for sliding his arms around Finn and Rey’s waists from behind and resting his head on their shoulders, for greeting them with kisses on the cheek. Finn greets Rey like this when she wakes up one morning, and she responds by kissing him full on the mouth, then Poe. They spend an hour teaching each other how to kiss, tangled in each other’s arms, and from there it begins to feel routine. 

They begin exploring each other’s bodies. Rey leans into touch like a flower into sunlight; Finn and Poe spend an evening kissing her all over, combing out her hair, and Finn could swear that she absorbs their fondness like heat, that by the time she dozes off she’s glowing with it. She’s grabby with them, clinging to handfuls of their stomachs and sides when they’re alone or in bed, hanging onto their shirt hems and belt loops and hands when they walk together on base. The first time she grabs a handful of Finn’s belly, he can’t help but grin - there’s enough extra fat on him now to fill her whole hand.

The first time he works up the nerve to sink his hands into Poe’s belly, it’s a warm night, and Poe comes to bed without a shirt on, his belly and sides rounding over the waistband of his underwear. Although Finn is getting used to seeing Poe shirtless, the sight never fails to trigger a swooping in his chest. He tries not to stare, but Poe catches him anyway and smiles.

“Like what you see?” he asks, and Finn feels himself go red. He nods, hesitantly, and Poe’s smile widens as he gets into bed beside Finn. They’re in Rey’s room tonight - she’s showering, still adjusting to the unthinkable luxury of having her own private water supply. The more she gets used to the idea of water as an endless resource, the longer her showers are becoming.

Poe’s seemed better lately, his lows less immersive than they used to be. Finn has learned to tell the difference between his forced smiles and his real ones, and more and more lately, Poe's smiles have reached his eyes instead of stopping at his lips. Logically, Finn figures that it’s because there’s been a lull in First Order activity, which means fewer pilots being sent out on active missions and thus fewer people to worry about not coming back, but he likes to think that the support system he and Rey and Poe have created for each other is part of it too.

Poe pokes the bulge at Finn’s waist. “You’re not looking too bad either, buddy,” he says, and Finn’s whole body goes warm. 

“You think?” he asks, and Poe winks at him, slithers down in bed. He lifts Finn’s T-shirt and plants a kiss on the pooch of his belly, then rolls Finn’s shirt back down and flops onto his back.

“I think so, yeah.” He pushes his hair off his forehead and cocks his head at Finn. “Do you like it?”

Finn’s hand goes to his own stomach. “Do I … oh, yeah. I … really like it, yeah.”

Poe smiles. This isn’t his playful grin, or his wicked one, or his sympathetic one, all of which Finn has on file in his brain. This one is fond, a soft curve on his lips while the weight of the smile rests in his eyes.

“I’m glad,” he says. “Not everyone likes it at first. It grows on them” - he smirks as Finn rolls his eyes - “but I’m happy that you aren’t going through that initial discomfort. You look very good with a little …” He reaches for Finn’s belly again, takes a gentle pinch. 

“You don’t miss the abs?” Finn teases, although he’s still blushing.

Poe shakes his head. “Never got the appeal of them. Yavin IV’s not very big on visible musculature. We like a little extra fat.” He jiggles his belly, and Finn’s breath catches. “Or a lot of extra fat. More is always better, we say.”

“I like that idea,” Finn says, settling onto his back. “I didn’t know I’d like it until … I don’t know. I saw all of you, and you looked so … comfortable. Like you had room to enjoy yourself, nobody was enforcing rations or diets or anything. It’s liberating. I like feeling like I can indulge without being punished for it.”

Poe rolls onto his side, traces a finger lightly down the side of Finn’s face. Finn feels feather-light, like his entire being exists inside the electric tingle of Poe’s skin against his own. “Were you punished for that … before?”

Finn nods, squirms a little when he feels Poe’s other hand creep to his side, where his still-smallish love handles are beginning to lip over the waistband of his boxers. “Yeah. Especially when we were kids - they’d give us extra food if we were out of line, let us eat ourselves sick, and  _ then  _ we’d get reprimanded and punished for being gluttonous.” He makes a face, remembering the sour feeling in his stomach he’d have days afterward.

“That’s awful,” says Poe softly, stroking the skin on Finn’s belly with his thumb. “That’s - I wish I had a way of going back in time to make sure that never happened to you.” He pecks a kiss on Finn’s temple. “I’m sorry,  _ querido _ .”

“It’s okay,” says Finn. “I’m unlearning it.”

Poe smiles. “Yes, you are, from the looks of it. I hope it’s better on your own terms.”

Finn levers himself up onto an elbow, meets Poe halfway for a kiss. “Isn’t everything?”

He rolls so that he’s just a little bit on top of Poe, his hand resting on the mound of Poe’s belly. “Can I …?” he asks, and he can’t finish the sentence because even the idea of it gets him flustered.

“Can you what?” asks Poe, and this time it’s the wicked grin.

“Touch,” mumbles Finn. He taps Poe’s stomach. “You know.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” says Poe, and if Finn weren’t already so flustered he’d get indignant about how much Poe is  _ enjoying  _ getting him flustered. “Go ahead, play with it. I like it, it feels nice.”

Finn’s face is  _ flaming _ .

He presses down experimentally and just stops himself from making a sound of surprise at how  _ soft  _ it is. Poe’s skin is warm, velvety, a thin trail of hair bisecting his tummy and snaking up to his chest. He thinks Poe is heavier now than he was when Finn arrived on base - his sides are beginning to form rolls, his love handles swelling a little more over his waistband. Finn can see, up close, all the places where his skin has stretched to accommodate his weight gain. Some of the striae on his stomach are older, pale and silver, but there are some that are still fresh and pink. Finn runs his fingers over them, pokes at them to watch Poe’s stomach wobble.  

“I like these,” he says. “They’re cute.”

“You’ll get some of your own if you put on a few more pounds,” says Poe, amused. “Around your hips too, you’re getting a little wider there.”

Finn’s heart skips. He repositions himself so that he’s sitting on Poe’s thighs, and takes a breath to gather his nerves before grabbing two handfuls of Poe’s gut.

There’s too much for him to hold in just two hands, is the first thing he processes. Finn realizes in a rush of heat that he wants this, too. He wants so much belly that it overflows his grasp.

“Mmm,” Poe hums, nodding. “That’s nice.”

Finn squeezes a handful, feels how soft but substantial Poe is beneath his hands. “Damn,” he says softly, and Poe’s belly jiggles as he kicks out a little laugh. 

“Yeah?”

“ _ Yeah _ ,” says Finn, sliding down to kiss Poe’s belly at its crest. Poe makes a soft, happy sound, and Finn keeps kissing, marveling at the doughy give of his skin. “You’re so -  _ stars _ , you’re so beautiful. There’s so much of you.”

Poe grins. “More for you to kiss. You’d be right at home on Yavin, you know that?”

Finn doesn’t reply, too busy sucking at a mouthful of Poe’s love handles. “Jess is right,” he says when he comes up for air. “Love handles  _ are  _ the best body part.”

Poe laughs full-out this time. “She’ll be overjoyed to hear that you agree.”

“How much is this?” Finn asks, pausing in his systematic kissing. “Like, how much … extra?”

Poe purses his lips, sighs. “I haven’t checked in a while, but … forty, maybe? Forty-five? It’s a lot.”

“Oh, wow,” says Finn, a little breathlessly. “That.  _ Is  _ a lot.” He cradles Poe’s gut in his hands, weighing it. “How much do you think I have?”

“Lift up your shirt?” says Poe, and Finn obliges. Poe sits up, his belly settling into rolls, and kisses Finn’s navel before sitting back to examine him.

“Maybe twenty?” Poe guesses, grabbing a handful of Finn’s stomach, and Finn can’t help but grin. 

“Oh, look at this,” says Poe, tracing along Finn’s hip. “You have a couple of little stretch marks starting here.”

“I do?” says Finn, twisting to see, and Poe smiles at his excitement. 

“Sure do,” he says, running the edge of his fingernail along the tiny pink stripes. They’re small still, maybe the length of Finn’s little finger, but he’s delighted nonetheless.

“ _ Cool _ ,” he says, leaning down to kiss Poe on the mouth. “I can’t wait to gain as much as you. I love how it feels. I can feel it when I move sometimes. The other day I was taking the stairs down to the training center and I could feel it jiggle a little, my stomach and my ass.”

Poe’s fond smile is back. “You carry it very well. It’s very cute.”

“Oh yeah?” says Finn, easing him back in bed. “You think?”

He shifts so that he’s lying on top of Poe, and Poe lets out a little  _ oof _ . “You’re heavy,” he teases, and Finn grins. 

“Just wait until I’m as heavy as you are.”

They kiss for a while, slow and sweet. Rey isn’t big on long kisses; she prefers showing her affection with her hands or in quick pecks of her lips. Finn and Poe don’t indulge in languid makeouts too often so as not to make her feel left out, but every now and then, when she’s in the shower or wakes up early to train with Luke, they’ll linger in bed and enjoy the laziness of it.

Poe’s stomach growls, and Finn smirks. “Still hungry? Dinner was barely two hours ago.”

“I’m always hungry,” Poe quips. “I’m digesting. I ate, like, three plates of dinner, it’s a lot of work.”

Finn slides down so he can kiss Poe’s gurgling belly. “Mmm. Don’t forget the two helpings of dessert.”

“ _ One  _ helping,” says Poe, managing to sound mildly offended around the tickled little whimpers he’s letting out as Finn darts his tongue over the underside of his belly.

“Please,” says Finn. “You had enough on that plate to count for two helpings.”

Poe gives a dramatic little moan. “There was namana cream pie tonight,” he whines, squirming as Finn kisses at him. “You know I’m weak for namana cream pie.”

“Yeah, I know you are.” Finn mouths at his underbelly, where Poe is a little paler, his skin edging toward cellulite, and sucks at it. He nips at it gently, and Poe says, “ _ Oh _ .” 

Finn grins up at him. “You like that?”

“A lot,” says Poe, a little breathless. “I'll show you what it feels like, hang on - but do it again first.”

Finn buries his face in Poe's stomach, mouthing at him until he finds purchase on a wedge of fat. He bites down slowly, until Poe cries out and grabs for him, and Finn eases off, blood rushing in his ears like he's underwater. 

“Sorry,” Finn says, kissing the spot where his teeth were moments before. “Too hard?”

Poe whines, propping himself up on his elbows. “Yeah, but it wasn’t bad. You want a turn?”

Finn nods vehemently and switches places with Poe, taking off his shirt for easier access. He’s trembling a little, anticipation coursing through him, and he can barely stay still as Poe straddles his thighs, slips down so that his face is level with Finn’s stomach.

“Mmmm, look at you,” he says, and Finn squirms. “You’re getting pretty round, aren’t you?” He dips down and presses a kiss above Finn’s navel. “All soft and sweet.” Another kiss. Finn’s lightheaded, like he’s been out in the sun too long. “Just wanna take a bite out of you.” 

He glances up to give Finn a quick, mischievous grin, then ducks his head back down and catches a pinch of Finn’s belly between his teeth.

“ _ Oh _ ,” says Finn. The skin there is much more sensitive when someone else is touching it, and he feels like every nerve he has beneath his skin is prickling, dancing with some electric charge. Poe applies some pressure, sucks at Finn’s skin, and Finn inhales sharply. 

And that’s when Rey emerges from the shower, wearing a towel wrapped around her wet hair, a pair of underwear, and not much else. Poe’s head snaps up guiltily, and Finn cranes his neck to look at her over Poe.

“What are you doing to Finn?” she asks conversationally, unwrapping her towel and squeezing it around sections of her hair. 

Poe sits up fast, and Finn takes a little perverse satisfaction in the fact that his cheeks go pink. “I was just kissing his belly.”

Rey nods, toweling the water from her shoulders. She takes a loose tank top from the second drawer of her bureau and wriggles into it, then comes to join them on Finn’s other side. “That sounds nice,” she says. “I’d like to kiss both of your bellies.”

“Go ahead,” says Poe, flopping on his back beside Finn. The movement makes his stomach jiggle, and Finn is overcome with the urge to bury his face in it all over again. 

Rey lies down on her belly, making herself comfortable between them. She wobbles Poe’s belly experimentally, then Finn’s. Her kisses are like a rainfall, gentle and light, and she peppers both of their stomachs with them.

“Hey,” says Finn hesitantly, and she looks up.

“You can … use your teeth a little,” he says. “If you want.”

She looks at him a minute, as if working out the logistics in her head, and then nods, puts her mouth back on his skin. Her first nip is sharp, and Finn tries not to wince.

Rey lifts her head. “Too hard,” she says knowingly. “I felt you.”

“Just a little gentler,” says Finn, and Poe reaches to tap Rey’s shoulder.

“Here,” he says. “Let me show you.”

“I can do it,” says Rey, a little edge cropping up in her voice.

“No, no, I know you can,” says Poe. “But it feels nice, you might like it.”

She eyes him. “Okay,” she says after a long moment, and rolls onto her back. 

Poe gently rolls her tank top up and kisses her stomach where it’s just starting to soften, a round little pooch above her waistband. 

“That’s nice,” she says, arching into him. “Look, I have a little now too.”

“You do,” says Poe fondly. “It's very sweet.”

“Will you teach me how to eat like you?” she asks as he kisses her sides. “Oh - hey! That tickles,” she complains, squirming away. 

Poe laughs. “Sure, I will. You wanna get bigger too?”

“I wouldn't mind that,” she says. “But I want to feel full. In the good way, like you and Finn do.” She grabs for Finn’s hand. “You can help.”

Finn moves beside Poe, kisses her little belly for a minute. “Of course.” He sucks at her skin, then gently nibbles at the bit of pudge he can grab. She jerks, and he lets go.

“I don't like that,” she says, rubbing at the spot where Finn’s teeth grazed her. “The kissing is nice, but - no teeth.”

“Hey,” says Finn, “that's fine! Do you want to try it on me or Poe?”

She surveys them, squints a little. “Kind of.”

Finn watches as she takes a big bite of Poe's belly right away, no tender preamble. She moves her mouth against his skin, and he exhales a noise of pleasure. 

“If you suck at my skin like that,” says Poe, breathless, “it'll leave a bruise.”

Rey looks up, brow furrowing. “Do you  _ want _ me to do that?”

Poe goes a little red. “I don't mind it. The bruises are - they don't hurt, really. They just kind of … mark you up, mark you as someone else’s.”

Rey thinks about that. “They show that you're mine,” she says, words tilted to him, asking for confirmation. 

“Yep. Yours and Finn's.”

She nods once, decisively. “I like that.”

Poe rolls his hips beneath her, belly rippling gently. “Mark me up, then.”

“I want in on this,” says Finn, rolling onto his belly. “Rey, push over.”

She makes room for him, moving to kiss up Poe’s right side. Finn noses at Poe’s underbelly, the soft pale skin yielding easily to his touch. He draws his tongue across it, giving his own wicked grin when Poe shudders and whines. Above him, Rey’s teeth flash as she moves from his side to his arm where it’s thrown over his head. 

She hovers over the thick, soft padding over his bicep, and Poe huffs out a laugh. “Yeah? My arm flab too?”

“Hey,” says Rey, and Finn hears the fond twist to the defense in her voice. “I like your arm flab.” 

Finn nods his agreement from where he’s kissing at Poe’s plump hips. “I like how wide you are right here,” he says, framing Poe’s body with his hands. “Your hips are just about as wide as your belly.”

“That’s called being pear-shaped,” says Poe, rolling his hips, and Rey and Finn look at each other.

“What’s a pear?” asks Finn.

Poe’s mouth turns down a little. “It’s a kind of fruit, they have them on Coruscant. We should go out there sometime, the three of us. There’s lots of great food there.”

Rey’s eyes light up. “We should.” 

Finn nods into Poe’s belly, and Poe laughs. “Sounds like a plan,” he says. “Spend a couple days out there, see if I still fit into my cockpit afterward.”

_ That  _ gets Finn back into the mood.

By the time they’re finished, Poe’s stomach and sides are decorated with strings of purple bruises. Rey’s crop wanders up through the insides of his arms, with one outlier below the softness of his jaw, while Finn’s handiwork spans the breadth of Poe’s belly and hips as well as the silky, dimpled expanses of his inner thighs. Poe is blissed out, lost to pleasure: eyes heavy-lidded, breathing slow and deep. Finn’s fondness for him swells in his chest, warm and hopeful and reassuring, a kind of comfort he somehow likens to the pleasant sense of satisfaction he feels after overeating. 

Rey edges over to him on her elbows. “Want me to bite you too?”

Finn kind of does, but he makes the mistake of thinking about it too long. Poe made this sound like ownership, this process of being marked up by another person. It's visceral in a way that's separate from being Rey's and Poe’s in an abstract sense: Finn has been branded before. And of course that was different, brutal, a ritual hewn from order and dehumanization. But still he remembers the excitement with which he went under the iron when he was younger, so eager to be owned, to be proven, to be  _ part  _ of something. It was the last step to becoming a cadet, going under the iron, and if you were brave you did it without crying, without screaming when the metal touched you. 

Finn was very brave. Finn has his own brands, puckered and tough with scar tissue, from pressing his skin against the pipes of the boiler in preparation, so he would not scream and would not cry. 

Rey is tracing spirals on the skin of his stomach, her fingers gentle as rain, and Finn shakes himself from the flashback. This is not ownership. This is tenderness, this is a lacing of hands and a squeeze of his shoulder, reassuring. This is not  _ I own you _ , this is  _ I love you _ .

This thought comes very clearly to someone who has never heard those words spoken to him. 

“Do you want me to?” Rey asks again, softly, and Finn nods, reaching out to stroke her damp hair while she goes to work. 

He keeps quiet save for the sighs and whimpers he lets out as Rey bruises him. This is a realization he’d like to share with Rey and Poe at once, a moment that should be a little more special than Rey sucking marks into his stomach and Poe passed out beside them. 

It keeps him warm when Rey pulls back and thumbs at her work approvingly before lying on his chest, and he can feel it humming in his chest when he settles between them in bed, low and vibrant and steady. It feels like something larger than himself, and as it crests and swells inside him, he feels Rey and Poe press closer as if drawn to him, some invisible thread knitting their pulses together. 

As unobtrusively as possible, he reaches over Poe and grabs his datapad from Rey’s nightstand, holds it above him, and angles it so that he can capture all three of them in the picture. Rey opens one eye at him when the flash goes off, pushes her hand over his face. He grins around her and snaps another picture, and she shakes her head, fondness creeping through her exasperated expression, and closes her eyes again, her hand sliding down to his belly.

Finn looks at those pictures until the glow of the screen hurts his eyes in the dark. This is something he wants to remember.


	8. Chapter 8

“Take a deep breath,” says Poe. “How do you feel?”

Rey breathes in, centering herself like she does with Luke in their meditations. She reaches out with her mind to her body, feels the heaviness in her stomach, the way it's making the rest of her feel lazy and slow. “Pretty good.”

Poe nods. “Good. Do you want another slice of bread?”

She nods and takes the one he offers, spreading it with fruit preserves from the open jar between them. They're sitting on the floor in Poe's room, a smorgasbord set out on his little rug. Finn is lounging on the large cushion Poe keeps in the corner beside BB-8’s charging port. He ate with them until he was full but not overstuffed, but even that little bit of bloat was enough to make his pants so uncomfortably snug that he unbuttoned them, the dark skin of his stomach swelling forward into the empty space. He looks ripe, content as BB-8 tries to teach him bits of binary, bantering back and forth as Poe and Rey work their way through the food in front of them. 

Rey fits one half of the slice into her mouth. The bread is fluffy and has the slightest hint of sourness to it, and the preserves are sweet and tart on her tongue. She doesn't quite understand why people bothered inventing candy when bread and jam exist. “Okay. I'm good for now. I'm maybe three quarters to where I want to be.”

Poe looks pleased. “Good. See, you're already gauging it better.”

She glows a little with the praise, feeling herself bump an inch or so off the ground before she settles back down. Finn looks up, grins at her. He says he can feel her when she uses the Force, a little ripple in his chest. Luke says she needs to work on this. She’s gotten good at mastering anger and hurt, can feel those in waves without losing control of herself, but joy is another matter. She wants to feel as much happiness as she can, now that she’s in a place where that’s possible, and she’s afraid that if she learns to master the power behind these little bursts, she won’t feel them as brightly.

“Feeling good?” Finn asks, and she nods around a mouthful of bread.

She  _ is  _ feeling good. Her stomach feels warm and a little overfull, but she doesn't feel sick at all. She's been working at pushing her limits over the past few weeks, slowly increasing her portions at meals. She's starting to notice changes in her body: the squishy belly that's gathering on her waist, the way the tops of her thighs are just starting to brush. The leggings Jess gave her are starting to fit better around the waist. She feels better than she can ever remember feeling like this, stronger and brighter and more alive. 

Even Luke has noticed a change in her performance since she began training with him - not only are her abilities to manipulate the Force strengthening, but she's quicker with her mind, can put more power behind her movements. She can ground herself more effectively when she's meditating, and her entire body hums with health and vibrancy, a baseline better than she's ever had before. 

Behind her, Finn burps, and BB-8 chirps indignantly in response. “Excuse  _ you _ ,” Finn retorts.

Poe laughs, his stomach jiggling a little in his lap. “Hey, be nice, B.”

Finn grins over at them, thumbing at the loose flaps of his pants on either side of his belly. He'll need new ones soon, Rey thinks, noting how tight this pair is around his waist, the strain of the seams around his thighs and backside. She imagines him popping that button, and she’s surprised to find that she thrills a little at the idea of his gain laid out so plainly.

She spreads jam on another slice of bread and starts in on it, and Poe slides her the jug of water they’ve been passing among them. She takes a sip between bites, follows it with a deep breath to evaluate how full she feels.

Poe is sitting cross-legged, his belly resting on his thighs, and as Rey tears her slice of bread in half, he leans back on his hands and lets out a soft belch. “I think I'm done for tonight. I fly out tomorrow, remember.”

Rey covers her mouth as she chews, trying not to let her apprehension about his mission prick at her. “You didn't eat that much. Shouldn't you? Don't you need energy for the mission?”

Poe makes a face. “We get our mission energy in little capsules. If you have too much in your stomach when you take them, they make you feel really sick.”

“The stimulants,” Rey remembers.

He nods. Finn looks over, cocks his head, and scoots his cushion closer.

“Stimulants?” he asks warily. “Drugs?”

Poe glances over at him. “Did you have them too?”

“Not me,” says Finn, shuddering. “Jakku was my first battle, you go in cold so they can evaluate your natural performance, see if you need the drugs. But some of the other troopers, the ones who’d been in combat for a while, they got them. It made them … they were scary. Their eyes would go all bloodshot and they got bloodthirsty. Aggressive. Like they'd gone feral.”

Rey, who’s heard herself described as feral more than once, on Jakku and on base, brushes off the association before it can prickle. Drugged-up-stormtrooper feral and do-what-it-takes-to-survive feral are two different things, she reminds herself. She crawls onto Finn’s cushion, careful not to squish her bloating stomach, and he tucks an arm around her.

“I promise these drugs are not like that,” says Poe. “I  _ promise _ . I've been flying with stimulants for years and I've never seen anyone go bonkers on them. Ours aren't even habit-forming.”

“Okay,” says Finn, although he still looks dubious. “What do yours do?”

“Keep us awake and destroy our appetites,” says Poe with a wry grin. “It feels like all of your senses are on alert, like you’re operating on a higher plane than normal. You don't want to touch food the whole time you're on them, but once you come down, you're starved.”

“Isn't there another drug you take to reverse the first one?” Rey asks, scooping a handful of amber-root chips from the bag on the floor. “Jess told me a little about it.”

“Yep,” says Poe. “That one knocks you out and makes you hungry. Also not addictive or threatening,” he adds, nodding to Finn. “Except to my waistline.” This gets a little smirk out of Finn, and he pokes at the jelly roll of Poe's love handle. 

“So what happens?” says Rey, so Finn doesn't feel like he's the only one worried. “When you get back to us, what happens to you?”

Poe takes a deep breath. “When I get back I'm going to sleep for about twenty-four hours, and then I'm going to want to eat until I make myself sick."  
  
"But we ... shouldn't let you do that," says Finn, like he's hazarding a guess.   
  
"No," says Poe, "but I'm not going to put that on you anyway. We have a system, Jess will take care of me."   
  
"We can do it!" Rey protests around a mouthful of chips. "We'll take care of you. We can feed you."   
  
Poe looks dubious. "I don't want to make you guys deal with that. I get weird coming off the stimulants. All loopy and floppy."  
  
Rey stifles a smile. She thinks about the way Poe stayed up for days at Finn's bedside, keeping himself awake with sweets and cup after cup of caf. She remembers how droopy his eyes were after a few days, how his voice got gravelly and started to slur, how his balance suffered and his hands were clumsy, how -   
  
"Oh," she says. "You were coming off them the whole time we waited for Finn, weren't you?"   
  
Poe goes a little red, but he nods. "Yeah. If you don't take the counterdosage you stay awake for days. That one helps you come down from the stimulant, you know? But I couldn't - not with both of you there, with Finn out like that ..."   
  
"So what happens when you don't take the counter one?"   
  
He shrugs. "You just taper off. The counterdosage forces you to sleep it off, so your body can kinda recover on its own, but if you don't take it and just let it wear off on its own, it's just like ... you stay awake, but you start to feel all those days you've been awake. Your appetite comes back but you're nauseous because the drug is still in you.”   
  
“You were eating while we were in the medbay,” she reminds him. “You ate all those sweets.”

She remembers watching him through the haze of sleep and meds that had been fogging up her brain as he mechanically unwrapped candies, shoving them into his mouth by the handful. He'd eaten his way through several large bags over the course of a few days, mostly while Rey was supposed to be asleep - when she was awake and alert he only ever got food from the mess. Her instincts were operating at too high a frequency to allow her to rest, so instead she’d watched through the dark as he'd plowed through bags of treats.

Poe nods, his cheeks coloring a little. “Oh, believe me,” he says. “I was nauseous. You eat that much sugar, stimulants or not, you’re not gonna feel too good.”

“Then why …?” Finn asks, absently tracing over the blossoming stretch marks on his hips. His belly sits on his thighs a little now, folding down the open fly of his pants. Rey pokes at his underbelly, runs her fingers along the smooth skin there.

Poe’s mouth crimps. “After Starkiller wasn’t a great time. We lost Niv, we lost Ello, we lost Bastian - it was tough. You cope how you can.”

It’s the first time Rey has heard him mention the names of the pilots they lost, and it jerks at her like a hook with a barb. She thinks back to the night she first overate, Poe cradling her in his arms, his voice raw.  _ Sometimes _ , he’d said.  _ When I’m very sad, or very lonely _ .

She’s overtaken by the urge to hug him, to make sure he knows he’s less alone than ever now. She scoots a little closer to him, gives him a quick squeeze and pecks him on the soft underside of his jaw. 

“We’ll take care of you when you’re sad now,” she says. “You don’t have to eat yourself sick anymore.” 

Poe leans against her as Finn’s face rearranges itself in understanding. He crowds Poe’s other side. “Don’t make yourself sick,” he echoes. “You have us now.”

“Thank you,” says Poe softly. 

“And we’ll take care of you after your mission,” Rey adds. It makes her feel a little less anxious about his departure, making plans to take care of him when he returns. “We can handle that. If that's part of being with you, we have to learn." 

Poe goes a little pink at  _ being with you,  _ smiling down at his lap. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll talk to Jess before I leave tomorrow. She can give you the rundown of what it entails.” He bumps his fists against each other, clears his throat. “Yeah, um - hey, you know, about, um, being together. I gotta … I wanted to talk to you guys about something, you know, before I leave.”

“Okay,” says Rey, over Finn’s eager “Sure!”, and Poe smiles a little.

“That freaks most people out,” he says. “The  _ we need to talk _ .”

“We’re not most people,” says Finn, and Rey loves that he sounds proud of this.

“Oh, believe me,” says Poe. “I am very aware of that.”

Finn grins, and Rey does too, leaning so that her shoulder knocks gently against Finn’s.

“So,” says Poe, taking a deep breath. “It’s important to me that we talk about this, and that we talk about it before I go on this mission, just … just, you know, in case, and … I just need to make sure.” He bumps his fists together again. “We’re … in a relationship. Right? We all agree that’s what we’re doing?”

Rey tries not to exchange an obvious glance at Finn, but when she slides her gaze in his direction, he’s looking at her too. “I think so,” she says. “That means we’re … each other’s people, right?”

“Yes,” says Poe. “That’s what that means."

Finn gives a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you asked,” he says to Rey. “I wasn’t sure either.”

Poe looks between them. “And you know that if this relationship ever stops making you happy, we can stop.”

“I don’t think that will happen,” says Finn, and Rey nods her agreement. 

“I hope not,” says Poe. “But it’s important to me that you know you have that option.”

“Okay,” says Finn cheerfully. “We have that option.”

“So we all agree,” Poe says. “We’re in a relationship and we are all okay with this.”

“I’m okay with this,” says Rey. “I’m pretty happy about it.”

Finn smiles, reaching for their hands. “ _ I’m  _ pretty happy about it.”

Poe squeezes their hands, rubbing his thumbs over the backs, and he smiles too, fond eyes crinkling at the corners. “Good,” he says softly. “I’m happy about it too.”

For a moment, Finn’s face catches in Rey’s periphery, and she watches him closely. He looks like he’s on the cusp of saying something, but then Poe lifts their hands and kisses them, and Finn’s attention reverts back to him. 

She tucks herself under Poe’s arm to give him a little extra reassurance and takes another piece of bread. She breaks off two bite-sized pieces, and offers one to each of them. 

Finn takes his and smiles, bumping his forehead to hers. “Did you eat that whole loaf?” he asks, gesturing to the near-empty bag the bread came in. 

Rey swallows her own bite of bread and considers it. “I think Poe had a slice or two, but … I've eaten almost all of it, yeah.”

“Wow,” says Finn, kissing her forehead. “Look at you. Are you full yet?”

“I'm pretty full,” she says. She takes a sip of water and hiccups. “But I'm not  _ very  _ full yet.” 

“Mmm,” says Finn. “You should get very full. Let us take care of you.”

Warmth rushes over Rey's scalp in a liquid glow. “Yes,” she says. “Take care of me, please.”

Poe nods, squishing up against her other side. “Eat as much as you want,  _ querida _ . We're here.” 

So Rey eats.

She finishes the bread, takes another couple handfuls of chips to balance out the texture of the bread. Poe snagged one of the little cakes that she likes from stars know where, and she saves that for last, for after she's finished off the fruit and cubes of cheese she helped Poe slice up earlier. She lets the taste of honey and spices linger on her tongue as she exhales, feeling the weight of everything she's eaten settle against her hips. She understands what Jess meant now, about not being able to move. She probably could if she wanted to, if she  _ had _ to, but the glory comes in knowing that she doesn’t want to, doesn’t have to. Her mind feels made of rounded edges, everything soft and sleepy, cushioned by the overwhelming heaviness in her stomach. 

She groans, long and content, and tips her head back into Poe’s lap. “Feel okay?” he asks gently, and she nods.

“I’m very full now,” she says, the words coming slow. “It feels  _ very  _ nice.”

“Good,” says Finn from beside him, kissing his fingertips and pressing them to her forehead so he doesn’t jostle her. She kisses into the air, and he brings his fingertips to her lips.

“You did so well,” says Poe, and she grins up at him. “You’re so full,  _ mírate _ .” He leans over her, grinning, and she wrinkles her nose in a scrunchy smile. “I’m so proud of you,  _ querida _ , did it all by yourself.”

“Mmm,” she says, basking in the praise, the pet name. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” says Poe, tender. “Are you comfortable?”

She’s half on the cushion on the floor, head in his lap, legs splayed out in front of her so her stomach has room to bloat. Finn is kneeling between her thighs, his hands light on her belly. “Mhm.”

“Would you like me to brush out your hair?” Poe asks, and she feels his fingers slip through her three loops. Her eyes lull closed imagining the sensation of him working through her hair, the firm bristles against her scalp. 

“Mhmmmm.”

“Okay. I’m going to reach back, grab a brush - you can stay right there, just a sec.” She feels him lean, hears him grope around. “You know the product you liked, the oil? The one that made my hair all soft? I have some still. Would you like that too?”

She burps, nods. “Yes, please.”

“Can I kiss your belly?” Finn asks. “I won't bite, I'll be gentle.”

“Yes please,” she echoes, squirming gingerly as Finn settles on his stomach between her legs. 

“Tell me if I press too hard,” he says, and she nods. She lifts an arm that feels so heavy she might need to employ the Force and gropes for him, stroking her hand over the fuzz of his hair. He plants a long kiss on the underside of her stomach, and she gives a little moan of pleasure. 

Poe carefully takes her hair down from its loops and runs his fingers through it, working out the snarls. She feels him shake some oil into his hands and sighs as he begins to apply it through her hair, her scalp prickling pleasantly at the tug of the brush. She feels like she’s soaking in a hot bath - a luxury Poe brought to her attention a few weeks back - and she can feel herself floating just above the surface of unconsciousness, awake enough to register sensation and little else.

Her stomach gurgles, and Finn breathes a little “shhhhh” against her skin, rubbing circles into the sides of her belly. She lets out an airy burp, and she feels the little huff of his laugh. 

“You’re so cute like this,” he says. “I can’t get enough of you.”

She makes a happy little noise because it’s all she can muster the energy for. “Have as much as you want.”

She dozes as Poe brushes her hair and murmurs to her in Yberian, and she picks up snatches of phrases here and there:  _ qué linda, mi rayo de sol, mi queridita.  _ Finn doesn’t say much as she drifts off, just curls himself next to her, an arm resting protectively over her hips, below the swell of her belly. His head rests against the curve of her side on the cushion, and she can feel his breathing lulling her off.

Few things in Rey’s life have been exactly as good as she’s hoped they would be, and she hasn’t yet gotten the hang of accepting the good things as things she deserves. They still feel more like accidents, blessings that missed their mark and landed at her feet instead: a lost and whirling BB unit. The nostalgic hum of the Falcon as it powered up for the first time in decades. The jagged, blinding joy of turning a corner on Starkiller and seeing Finn’s face.

But she wakes up between Poe and Finn in her bed, having apparently been moved from her previous position so gently that she didn’t even stir, and they’re both warm against her. Poe is sleeping with his head on her chest; Finn’s arm is slung across them both as if he’s holding their little unit together. For the first time, she feels like she deserves this, that maybe these two people are her cosmic reward for the hardship she’s endured, that here, between them, is somewhere she actually belongs.

She snuggles closer between them, hiccuping gently as she jostles her stomach a little. Finn shifts in his sleep, tucking her closer, and the movement shifts Poe a little, too, his stomach squishing against her hip. She tries not to think about his imminent departure, focuses instead of the softness of his body against hers, the warm safety of lying between him and Finn. She concentrates on the suffusive joy and relief she’ll greet him with when he comes back, the way she’ll try to fuse all of that into the hug she’ll give him when he touches back down. Luke tells her to focus on positive feelings when she starts feeling anxious, to channel that energy into constructive thoughts instead of spirals.  _ Hang onto the good,  _ he tells her.  _ Even if it hurts, even if if you’re afraid - find the good in it and dig in your claws. _

She carefully shifts herself until she can comfortably reach Poe’s and Finn’s hands, does breathing and mental intake exercises until she feels her brain smoothing out, and she hangs on.


	9. Chapter 9

It’s harder than Finn expects to say goodbye to Poe the next morning. Poe’s not allowed to tell them what his mission is, but he assures them that it shouldn’t put him in danger, he’s just gathering information about an unspecified person in an unspecified place. 

Finn hugs him hard, and Poe nuzzles up against his jaw, kisses him softly. His belly squishes up against Finn’s through his flight suit, and Finn tries his best to take a mental snapshot of the moment: the whiff of engine grease in the fabric of his suit, the soap Poe used in the shower this morning, the slight linger of caf on his breath, the weight of his arms around Finn’s waist, the prick of his stubble against Finn’s cheek. 

“I’ll be back soon,” says Poe. “A week at most. Before you even know I’m gone.”

Finn isn’t so sure about that. He hasn’t been away from Poe for more than a day’s work since he woke up in the medbay, and having already spent enough time thinking Poe was dead, he’d rather not repeat the process.

“I’ll know,” he says softly, and Poe squeezes him tighter, gives him a long kiss. 

Rey’s been hanging back, the hems of her sleeves fisted in her hands. Her shoulders are squared, her jaw set. She keeps her chin firm as Poe approaches, thumbs at her jaw.

“Hey,” he says gently. “Are you okay?”

She pulls her shoulders tighter, folds her arms. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” he says, careful. “Can I give you a hug?”

Her nod is almost imperceptible, and after Poe’s arms have been around her for a few seconds, she loosens, grabbing him so tightly that Finn hears him exhale in a little  _ oof _ . 

“Come back,” she says into his shoulder. 

“I will,” he assures her, kissing her forehead, then the crown of her head. “Stay out of trouble, hmm?”

She nods against him, and Finn catches her eyes, wide and uncertain, over Poe’s shoulder.

She sticks close to Finn once Poe is gone, tucking herself under his arm. He can hear her trying to slow her breathing, and when he glances at her, her brow is pinched and her jaw is quivering. He can feel anxiety coming off her in waves the way she usually exudes warmth, 

“Hey,” he says, putting an arm around her waist. “It’s gonna be okay.”

He wants to add something more reassuring to smoothe the crease between her eyebrows, but he’s too aware of how much could go wrong. Finn believes that Poe is good at what he does, that he’s a brilliant spy and an ace pilot - he’s heard it from everyone on base, from General Organa herself. But in Finn’s limited experience, Poe’s track record with missions is not great, so he’s hesitant to let Rey get overly confident about his return should something go awry.

“I’ll feel it if something happens to him,” she says quietly. “And then it'll be too late to help him.”

“Well,” says Finn, struggling to sound comforting, “at least we’ll know that way, right? We won't have to wonder if something went wrong.”

Rey holds his gaze. “I don't know if that's better.”

Finn feels his shoulders droop, and he turns to face her, touching his forehead to hers. “I know. I'm afraid too.”

“How did you do it when I left?” she asks. “You had just woken up, you barely knew anyone, and I  _ left  _ -”

Finn smoothes his hands down her back. “You said you'd come back. I had to believe you.” 

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, and he watches her iron herself out. “Poe said he’d come back too. I believe him.”

He kisses her forehead. “Me too.”

She takes another long breath, then rests her head against his chest. “Can we get breakfast?” she asks after a moment, slipping a hand under the hem of his shirt. “I have to go see Luke soon and I want to eat first.”

“Sure thing,” Finn says, kissing the top of her head. He puts an arm around her waist, plays with the little bulge at her side. “You want to eat in the mess or take it back to your room?”

Rey presses herself closer. She looks very small like this, tucked into herself and hidden beneath one of Poe’s worn flannels. “Room.”

They settle into her bed with hefty servings of eggs, hash, and pastries. Finn’s grateful he’s kept his sweats on, because he feels as if Poe’s departure has widened the chasm of his appetite; he needs to fill that hole somehow. Even so, his waistband digs into his stomach, and he squirms a little to lessen the pressure, rolling down the fabric the way he’s seen Poe and Jess do. He feels his belly jiggle as he moves, and a little thrill cuts through the cloud hovering over him. 

Rey isn’t usually too social when there’s food in front of her, but she glances at Finn with intrigue in her eyes as he shifts around. “Look at your chest,” she says, gesturing with her fork, and Finn’s stomach swoops. “You’re soft, look.”

Finn puts down his plate, feels around his pecs. They’re squishy under his hands, just starting to get puffy, and he pulls the collar of his shirt away from his neck to smile down at them. “I guess all of me is getting soft,” he says, and Rey nods emphatically.

“You’re much bigger than you were,” she says, taking a sip of hot chocolate. “I think it suits you more.”

He grins wider. “I think so too. And you - you look so healthy, look at you.” He pokes at her belly, and she squirms, wrinkling her nose at him. “You’re all rosy and soft and strong.”

“I was strong before,” she objects around her last mouthful of breakfast, setting her plate and fork on her nightstand, and Finn swoops in to kiss her on the cheek.

“You were,” he agrees. “But you look strong in a different way. You look hardy. Like it would take you a long time to starve in the desert.”

She swats him lightly, but she’s grinning. “Thank you,” she says. She drains her hot chocolate and stretches her arms over her head, mug still in hand. “Are you doing anything today?”

Finn shrugs, settling back against her pillows. “Shift in the medbay in a few hours, but nothing until then. I might nap.”

Napping is a novelty Finn still hasn’t tired of. In the Order, they were allotted three sleep cycles per night, monitored by a sensor under their skin. There’s a scar on the back of his neck where Dr. Kalonia removed it when he first got to base, a tiny slit that’s now pink with fresh skin. 

Rey leans down to kiss him, bracing herself with a hand on his belly. “You feel full, you must be sleepy. Did you eat enough?”

He nods, and she reaches up to thumb at his chin where it doubles. “You’re cute.”

He grins. “Yeah, I know. Go train, you Jedi, you.”

He feels the familiar little flutter in his chest, watches Rey’s eyes pinch shut and her eyebrows furrow. He feels an odd sensation wash over him, like the air around him is giving him a gentle push, and then Rey’s eyes snap open again and the feeling dissipates abruptly, like the dreams he has sometimes about plunging from the sky into the sand.  

“Sorry,” she says. “I still can't lift you.”

He laughs, rubbing at his belly. “That's okay. There's a lot of me to lift.”

She smirks. “True. I bet I can get that mug to you, though.” She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes again. The mug rises half an inch off her nightstand, and he watches as she carefully lifts it higher, inches it out over the floor. 

She almost has it hovering over the mattress when Finn tries to stifle a burp and fails. Her concentration shatters, and with it, the mug. 

“ _ Finn _ !” she says, half-laughing. “Shit!”

Finn is laughing too, and he pulls her close and kisses her. “Go to training,” he says. “I'll clean this up.”

“You are  _ distracting _ ,” she murmurs against him. “Go to sleep.” 

“I will,” he assures her, and he settles further under her duvet as she changes out of Poe’s flannel and into one of the tunics she acquired on her adventures with Luke. Her belly is beginning to push at the fabric, its curve just visible. She inspects the way it sits over her leggings, then pulls her boots on over the thick socks Karé knit her and Finn a while back. 

“I'll see you later,” she says, pausing on her way out the door. “Sleep well.”

He blows her a kiss, a gesture he learned from Jess, and once she’s gone, he picks up the ceramic shards and throws them away, then climbs back into bed. He scoops a pillow under his arm like it’s Rey or Poe and cuddles it close.

He wakes up a couple of hours later, blearily thinking that the pillow beneath his arm is Poe’s stomach, and he’s unpleasantly surprised to find that it’s not. It’s been weeks since he woke up alone in bed, and he sulks about it for a few minutes, bunched under the covers. The worst part, he thinks, is that he knows Poe can receive communications where he is, it’s not like Rey buzzing around in the reaches of deep space - but a mission isn’t a place to be receiving personal messages, so Finn takes a deep breath, pulls himself back together.

He pushes back the covers and hauls himself out of bed to get ready for his shift at the medbay, pausing as he steps in front of the mirror. Rey said he looks much bigger than he was, and it’s been a while since he took stock of his body on his own. He’s grown accustomed to hearing its praises sung by Rey and Poe, but their near-constant company doesn’t leave him much time to explore his own body. 

He strips to his boxers, then reconsiders and strips those too. His thighs touch, that's the first thing he notices. He knocks them together gently, grins when they jiggle. He's felt them starting to rub together, has found pills and little holes along the inseams of his pants lately. It's not quite on par with the damage Poe’s thighs do to  _ his  _ pants, but Finn progresses best when he has a goal to work toward, so he's okay with that. 

His belly sits on his thickening hips, a soft brown mound of dough that widens from his waist in a generous curve. He bounces on his toes and watches his stomach move with him. He wobbles it between his hands, rapt, and hefts it up, feeling just how much there is. It's too much to fit in his hands, and he lets out a delighted little laugh. He would never be mistaken for a stormtrooper looking like this. 

He traces up his chubby biceps, pinching at the excess fat over his muscles. There's a crease on either side of his waist, creeping around from his back, and he slips his fingers under the slim roll it forms on his side. He bends from to side, and his love handles overlap into thicker rolls, and he runs his hands over their folds reverently. His hips and underbelly are cobwebbed with fresh, pale stretch marks, and he traces over them, feeling the tiny difference in texture from the rest of his skin. 

He takes a soft blue shirt from his bureau and pulls it over his head, grinning when he sees the dip of his navel through the fabric. He thinks this shirt used to be Poe’s, and that gives him a little extra satisfaction in filling it out. It was probably Poe’s twenty pounds ago or so, but even still - he’s catching up. 

He struggles into a pair of loose grey pants - or, more accurately, a pair of grey pants intended to be loose. It’s a process to get them over his thighs now, and their inseams are beginning to fray. Their days are numbered, he thinks, sucking in to button them. They’re getting uncomfortably snug, and he’s looking forward to the day that he rips a seam.

He turns this way and that in the mirror, admiring the curves of his body under the drape and pull of his clothes. This is the way he’s supposed to look, he thinks. Soft and strong and healthy.

He grabs his boots from where they’re lined up by his desk and sits down on his bed to lace them. He leans forward to tug the left one on, feeling his belly pile up in his lap, and suddenly there’s the sensation of pressure finally giving, and his stomach surges forward in his lap as the button of his pants clatters to the floor a few feet in front of him.

Finn sits back, astonished. He looks down at his gut, sitting on his thighs, both sides of his fly flopping open beneath it. His stomach pushed down the zipper too, he realizes, flushing. That means he’s  _ way  _ too big for these.

He leans back and grabs his datapad and switches the camera to the holovid setting. He takes a deep breath, focuses the display on his middle. “So …” he says, hearing the disbelief in his voice. “I just popped my first pair of pants. I put them on and they were tight, but I could still button them, and then I sat down to put my boots on and the button just ... burst right off. It’s over there.” He zooms in on where the button is sitting on the floor. “I guess I’m really getting fat now, huh?”

He saves the video and sends it to Rey, even though she’ll be back later and he could tell her in person. He’s too caught up in the breathless excitement of the milestone. He wishes he could share  _ this  _ with Poe too, wishes he could hear Poe praise him for getting so big, for looking so good.

He carefully removes the pants, and even though he wants to systematically go through his wardrobe and see what other clothes he’s grown too heavy for, instead he pulls on a pair of sweats that let his belly flop freely over the waistband, no restricting buttons or zippers. He lifts his arms over his head, watching his t-shirt ride up a little, exposing the wobbly undercurve of his tummy.

His datapad beeps twice, and he picks it up to see a message from Rey blinking onscreen.  _!!!!!!!!!!!!  _ she says, and he grins. He loves having the ability to render her speechless - stars knows she has the same effect on him often enough.

He jiggles his belly in the mirror once more and sends back a little winking face. Out of habit, he keeps checking the pad for Poe’s response, and it takes a few checks for him to remember that he hasn’t told Poe about this yet, that there’s a chance he’ll never get to.

He shakes that feeling off, makes himself say aloud, “You’ll tell Poe when he comes back. He’ll be back in a few days, you just have to wait until then.”

It takes a few tries, but he manages to sound convincing. Finn gives himself a little reassuring smile. “It’ll be okay,” he says. “Trust me.”

He heads off to the medbay, trying to decide how many more pairs of pants he can feasibly go through before Poe gets home. 


	10. Chapter 10

A lot of the time, Rey is grateful for Luke. She doesn’t know how she would have handled spending so much time with a new person after being on her own for so long if Luke hadn’t been so accustomed to isolation, so hesitant to socialize himself. She counts it lucky that the universe saw fit to give them each other as a means of acclimating to a microcosmic new world before they had to face the larger one again. 

Or, she thinks, maybe that’s too harsh. She’s never not grateful for Luke. There are just some days where she gets a little impatient with his constant even keel, is all. It chafes at her on the days that she’s excited or restless or upset, because he doesn’t seem to fully connect to any of those feelings. He wants her to learn that kind of evenness so her emotions don’t tip her into impulse or panic, but it’s hard for her still, having recently discovered a whole spectrum of frighteningly pleasant emotions to explore. But as little fun as Luke is when she’s out of sorts, she’d still prefer to be with him than alone in her room while Finn learns how to heal people. Poe’s absence makes her antsy about being alone, brings back her anxiety of abandonment, and even when Luke is exasperated with her, his presence is better than nothing. 

She can’t focus today, keeps wandering off in her thoughts. She’s been trying to reach out to Poe all morning, trying to at least locate him in the galaxy, with no luck. She can pick up Finn on the south side of the base, humming with energy, maybe working out, and she can pick up General Organa in her quarters, her concentration narrowed to a letter she’s writing. She could feel Luke even if he weren’t right next to her, brimming with frustration that he’s trying not to direct at her, but there’s no sign of Poe. He’s been gone almost six days now, and against her will she’s beginning to worry.

“Rey,” says Luke, and she turns to him, breaking her minimal focus from the pile of rocks on the grass in front of her.

“If you can’t feel him,” says Luke, “he’s most likely just fine. You’d feel something drastic, crippling fear or injury or death. Or joy,” he adds, as Rey feels her jaw set. “Any strong emotion would be detectable from a long distance.”

“I don’t even know if he’s a long distance away,” she complains, dropping her hands and letting the rocks clatter unceremoniously to the ground. “I don’t know  _ anything  _ about where he is, and I don’t like that.”

“Trust me,” says Luke. “You’d feel him if he were in danger.”

His voice remains steady, but she feels him flinch a little, and she hesitates before pushing at him, asking for permission to reach into his emotion further. He allows her, and she peers into the layers of his consciousness, feeling the yank of loss, a rush of regret and fear flooding after it, the unfathomable, dissociative sensation of losing someone who seemed invincible. She digs further, and she feels the thin, fraying fiber of Han’s Force signature, a faded, washed-out purple that’s only alive in memory. She feels the places it was still knotted to the deep red of Leia’s own thread, the mirroring teal of Luke’s. Luke opens the wound wider so she can see, giving her the exact moment of Han’s death: the stillness before Luke realized Han was in danger, the wild helplessness of the moments preceding his murder, the chasmic grief that followed.

“It would feel like that,” says Luke softly, and it takes her a moment to realize that he’s spoken aloud and not in her head. 

She folds herself onto the grass, processing, and he sits beside her.

“I miss him,” she says, staring ahead of her. “I don’t know how not to worry about him.”

“If something happens to him, you will know,” says Luke, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “And until, or unless, that happens, you need to learn how to put it out of your head so that you do not distract yourself. If you let yourself become immersed in worry and guilt for letting him go, you will sabotage your own efforts of progress.”

She thinks about that. Poe wouldn’t want her to worry about him while he’s gone. In fact, Poe seems to think that nobody worries about him, that he isn’t worth all that, and although Rey knows different, she tries to convince herself that Luke is right. She needs to focus on herself while Poe is gone, and maybe if she works on making her own strides, it’ll make his return seem sooner.

She takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says. “Let me have another shot at those rocks.”

-

She meets up with Luke again later, at his suggestion that meditation might help her narrow her focus. Finn comes with her, and she wonders if he, too, finds it hard to be alone with one third of their triad missing.

They’re both overfull from dinner, and it doesn’t occur to her until they both ease down on the cushions Luke keeps on the floor of his quarters that he might notice.

“Are you feeling any better?” Luke asks, and she nods. She’s learned that it’s harder for her to get worked up on a full stomach, like she’s conditioned herself to be mellow in this state.

“You seem very even,” he says, maybe a little suspicious, and she shrugs. Beside her, Finn stifles a hiccup.

She begins the deep breathing routine they use to slip into meditation, and finds that it makes her very aware of how stuffed she is, feeling her heartbeat through the warm, oppressive fullness in her belly. She taps into that feeling, letting it melt over her like sunlight, and after a few moments she feels the room start to fade from her consciousness. She can feel Finn and Luke’s presences around her, but she’s less aware of their physical forms, more aware of the space they occupy in the universe. She’s less aware of her own corporeal form, like she’s not herself but her thread in the Force, more metaphysical than human, something infinitesimal inside an infinity.

She has no idea how long she exists in that soft, still headspace, but when she emerges, Luke is looking at her approvingly. “Well done,” he says. “I’ve never seen you enter the meditative realm so quickly. How do you feel?”

She stretches her arms above her head, feeling the heaviness of her belly pressing onto her hips. “I feel … very content. Like there’s a blanket of good things wrapped around me. Like nothing bad could be happening anywhere in the galaxy.”

Luke nods. “Excellent. That’s a deeper meditative state than you’ve achieved before, is it not?”

“I think so,” she says, glancing at Finn. He’s fast asleep, slumped against the side of Luke’s bed. “I think Finn might have reached a deeper one, though.”

Luke laughs, and the sound makes her warm inside. “I think he went deeper than either of us.”

“I would try to levitate him back to his room,” she says, “but I think he’s too heavy for that.”

Luke raises an eyebrow. “You’re both looking rather well-fed these days.”

“Isn’t it great?” says Rey, stroking Finn’s head where his hair is starting to grow out. He stirs but doesn’t wake up. “We’re both stronger than we’ve ever been.”

“In mind and in body,” Luke agrees. “Did you find this helpful for your anxiety? We can begin making it a routine at night if you’d like. I can guide you until you feel comfortable entering meditation yourself.”

“I would like that,” she says. “I think that would help.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” says Luke, and for a moment he looks like he expects her to leave. She feels a little snag of loneliness that isn’t her own, and she settles back beside Finn.

“Would you mind if I stayed a little longer?” she asks, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “I don’t really want to be awake alone right now.”

“Not at all,” says Luke, and she feels his loneliness exhale, recede. “I think I’m going to meditate a while longer, but you’re more than welcome to keep me company.”

“I will,” she says, and she waits until he’s slipped off beneath the surface to grope around for Finn’s datapad, never far from him. She picks through until she finds the camera, then turns it to face her, tilting it so that she captures her own rosy, contented face as well as Finn’s sleeping one, lolled back against Luke’s mattress. She snaps that photo, then takes several more making a variety of silly faces. She understands now what Finn meant all those weeks ago about taking pictures with the people you love, so you can remember them when they’re not around, and she vows that once Poe comes home, the three of them will take an absurd number of photos together. 


	11. Chapter 11

Poe is gone two days longer than scheduled, and the night of the second day, Finn wakes up to find Rey sitting up next to him, knees pulled to her chest, hugging herself like she’s trying to keep herself from falling into a thousand pieces. They’re in Poe’s bed tonight, so it’ll smell like them when he gets back. Rey is staring straight ahead, and she doesn’t turn when Finn sits up beside her.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and he realizes she’s shaking.

“He’s scared,” she whispers, still staring straight ahead. “He’s so scared.”

“Who?” says Finn, jolting toward her, his mind spinning so fast that it seems impossible that he was asleep a minute ago. “Poe? He should be on his way home, he shouldn’t be - there shouldn’t be anything to -”

“He was on course when I fell asleep,” she says, and he can hear the ragged frustration in her voice. “I was going to stay up and wait until I felt him land.”

“Hey,” says Finn, drawing her into his arms. She doesn’t loosen any, and he’s sure that his own shallow breathing isn’t helping her. “Don’t fault yourself for that, you have to sleep sometime. He’ll make it home okay.”

“His heart is racing,” she says. “I can feel” - she draws a hand behind her knees and pats her chest. “I can’t even find him in it, he’s all fuzzy. There’s no location, no details, it’s just -  _ fear _ .” She takes a long, shuddering breath. “But the thing is - I don’t sense any danger. He has to be scared of something, right? There has to be something  _ there _ . And instead it’s like he’s - he’s in a dream or something, like the danger’s only in his head.”

Something flickers in Finn’s memory. “In a dream?”

“Yeah,” says Rey, rocking herself against him. “Like he’s --” 

He feels the realization dawn on her, and she twists in his arms to look at him. “Is he back? He can’t be back, I would have felt - maybe because I was asleep - or the drugs --”

“One way to find out,” says Finn, torn between grinning and guarded. He follows her out of bed, lets her lean on his shoulder while she hops one leg at a time into a clean pair of his boxers, and they bound hand in hand to the medbay.

Dr. Kalonia heads both of them off at the door. “I swear, you two, he’s been back all of half an hour. It’s three in the morning, go back to bed.”

“But he’s here,” says Finn, squeezing Rey’s hand. “He’s okay?”

“He’s okay,” she confirms, and Finn feels the joy and relief rip through Rey as clearly as he feels it in himself. “He’s sleeping. The delay in his mission meant he went a little too long on the stims for his dosage. He looked like a dead man walking when he got out of that X-wing. Swaying and twitching, weaving, stammering. He was trying so hard to hold it together. We gave him a shower and got an IV in him, and then we put him under right away, let him rest. Come back tomorrow morning -  _ not  _ today,” she clarifies. “He needs at least twenty-four hours. Go back to bed. I promise he will be just fine.”

“Um,” says Rey, and Finn turns to look at her, concerned at the nudge of uncertainty in her voice. “I - he was scared, a little while ago. So scared it woke me up.” She looks at Dr. Kalonia with wide eyes. “Is that normal?”

She nods. “It’s not always a restful sleep at first, when the drugs begin to interact. Nightmares are normal, especially for someone like Poe. He’s been doing better, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, but PTSD like his is prone to rear its head in a situation like this. But he’ll be fine when he wakes up, and he’s in good hands here.” She brushes her hands together. “Now, when am I going to see you two again?”

“Tomorrow morning,” they chorus.

They drop off fast once they’re back in bed, and Finn wakes up several hours later to find Rey with her face butted into his chest, dampening his t-shirt.

“Hey,” he says, stroking her hair. “Everything okay?”

She nods against him. “Yeah. Just - I don't think I really believed we would all be together again. But” - she pulls back, scrubs at her eyes with the back of her hand - “he's here. And he's okay. And we can see him tomorrow.”

Finn kisses her forehead. “I know. I don't think I fully believed it either. The first time I ran a mission with Poe, you know, his rescue mission, we kinda crashed and burned. So - it was hard to get my hopes too high, you know?”

She rubs her face in his shirt. “Yeah. But he made it.”

“The Force must be on our side,” says Finn, rolling onto his back. He expects her to laugh, at least smile, but instead she goes pensive.

“I think it might be,” she says softly. “Lately everything feels better than I deserve.”

“Hey,” says Finn firmly. “You deserve every sun and every moon in this galaxy, all right? Poe and I are the least of that.”

She smiles at that, but shakes her head. “You’re not. Luke told me about the planet where he grew up, Tatooine? It has two suns. That’s how you feel to me, you and Poe.”

Finn’s stomach swoops down to his toes. “That’s how you feel to  _ me _ .”

This must be it, he thinks. If Rey feels the same way as he does, that  _ has  _ to be a real feeling, that has to be what people mean when they talk about love. 

She turns onto her side. With one hand, she traces over his lips; the other crawls under his shirt to stroke at his belly. “I guess maybe this is meant to be, then,” she says, and for a few minutes she’s quiet, moving her fingers along his skin. 

He might doze off for a little while, and when his eyes flutter open again, Rey is lying with her head on his chest, looking up at him. 

“Hey,” she says, smiling. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“I get to see you  _ both _ tomorrow,” she says, and he beams.

They eat a late breakfast with Jess and Kaydel, who look like they’ve also just rolled out of bed. Kaydel’s hair is pulled back into her two usual buns, but they’re nowhere near as meticulous as they usually are, and Jess’s is scraped back into a sloppy ponytail. 

“Heard Poe got in last night,” says Jess around a yawn. “He must have been wrecked by the time he got back, he was gone for a while.”

“Yeah, Dr. Kalonia said he was in bad shape,” says Finn. Jess flinches, and he backpedals: “No, I mean, he’s fine, he’ll be fine. But she said he was really burnt out. Weaving and twitching, she said.”

“Yeah, that happens,” says Jess, visibly relaxing. “If you’re out too long you start to feel it. But he’ll be all right once he sleeps it off.”

“I wish they’d let us in so we could be with you while you're asleep, at least,” says Kaydel. “Just to see that you’re okay.”

Jess swallows a bite of pastry. “It has to do with the drugs,” she says. “It’s like waking a sleepwalker, that kind of thing. It’s better if you sleep it off with no interruptions.”

“I know, I know,” says Kaydel. “I just wish you could do that in my bed so I could be with you.”

Jess leans over and kisses her cheek. “We can recreate it whenever you want. I’ll take a long nap, and when I wake up you can feed me.”

Rey clears her throat, gripping her mug of hot chocolate in both hands. “About that,” she says, and Jess cocks her head. 

“Yeah, hotshot?”

“Do you think you can run through what to do with Poe one more time?” Rey asks, hesitant. “I know the basics, I just - we’ve never done this before. Is there anything specific we need to have? Is there anything we shouldn’t give him?”

“We don’t want him to get sick,” Finn adds. “I mean, we won’t let him eat ‘til he’s sick, of course, but we don’t want to make him sick with anything we’re giving him.”

He doesn’t know if he likes the idea of feeding Poe just yet, but he certainly wants to help make him comfortable after this mission. If Rey wants to take the lead on feeding him, he’s more than happy to stroke Poe’s hair, massage his back, rub his belly if it makes him feel better. 

“Hey,” says Jess, “I don’t mind going through it again if you want me to. He should be comfortable, and you should be comfortable taking care of him. It’s a little daunting your first time, I get it.”

Rey looks immensely relieved. “Okay. Then run through it, please, if you don’t mind.”   
  
"So you want to start by getting a bunch of food from the mess,” says Jess, tracing a circle on the tabletop with the condensation from her water glass. “The commissary too - Poe likes those little namana cream pie things? Not like, a full pie, but they have, like, those soft cookie sandwiches with the cream in the middle? I think the packages are blue and yellow. I usually get him a couple of those, they’re two to a pack. But mostly you want to stick to regular food, not junk food. He needs protein and vitamins and carbs, not just sugar and fat. He needs some of that, too, because he hasn’t been eating, but you should focus on real foods. Too much junk food will make him sick when he’s like this, so stay away from that.”

Rey nods. Finn tries his hardest to stop thinking about Poe stuffing himself with a whole namana cream pie, how swollen and noisy his stomach would be after. He would need someone to rub his belly then for sure. 

“So you know he's going to be starving when he wakes up," Jess continues. "And granted, Poe’s appetite is massive even without drugs, but, you know. He's going to want to eat a lot. And that's fine. He's got a lot of calories to make up for. But when he starts wincing, if he looks like he’s in pain, that's when you want to stop. That means it's starting to hurt and we don't want that."   
  
"Wincing," repeats Rey, and Finn watches her close her eyes and mouth it the way she does when she’s committing things to memory. "Okay. And then?"   
  
"He probably won't want to stop," says Jess. "The drugs impede our natural appetite regulation. He'll ask for more, but just tell him no. Be gentle with him. He'll be lucid, but he'll be sleepy and a little fragile so go easy on him. Pet his hair and tell him he's had enough. He's usually whiny about it but just tell him that more will make him sick. That usually quiets him down. He'll probably drop off soon enough afterward but before that, you know, take care of him. Brush his hair, rub his stomach, hold his hand. Make him feel like he isn't alone."

Finn turns to Rey. “You can feed him,” he says. “I’ll do the other stuff. Is that okay?”

She nods, scraping the last bite of hash off her plate. “Sure.” She drains her mug of hot chocolate, then smiles at Jess. “Thank you,” she says. “That helps a lot. We’ll take good care of him, I promise.”

Jess smiles back. “I know you will, hotshot. I trust the two of you with him. And I’ll be around, you can grab me if something happens and you need me.”

“Perfect,” says Rey. “I mean - I hope we  _ don’t  _ need you, but - thank you. That’s good to know.” She goes a little pink, flustered, and Finn hides a smile in his mug of caf as she picks up her empty plate and stands, clearing her throat. “I'm going up again, Finn, do you need anything?”

“Not yet,” he says. “I'm still working on this.”

Once she gets up, Finn takes a sip of caf and looks at Jess and Kaydel. “So, don't mention this to Rey or Poe yet,” he says, “but - how do you know when you're in love?”

-

The next morning, he and Rey eat before they collect Poe from the medbay, so that once he’s in their care, he can be their primary focus. Rey’s borrowed a number of resealable containers from Jess, and they pile them with bread, fruit, sweet rice, cheese, hash, pastries, the nuna bacon that’s popular at breakfast here. Finn ducks into the commissary to snag a couple packages of the little cream pies. 

It takes both of them to carry the whole spread back to Poe’s room, and they drag over his little worktable from the corner and use that and his windowsill to lay everything out. Rey looks at the setup approvingly, and when she turns back to Finn, he can practically see the excitement radiating from her.

“Let’s go get him,” she says, and she’s glowing at the edges. Finn wishes he could love that visibly, so anyone who looked at him could tell how overcome he is with affection for his people.

Poe is sitting up in bed when they get to the medbay, propped up on pillows, BB-8 tutting at his bedside. Poe looks a little listless still, sporting a dark bruise beneath his right eye. His face is too pale for Finn’s liking, but he ignites as soon as he sees Finn and Rey heading toward him, his smile conquering his entire face.

Rey all but leaps onto his bed, wraps her arms around him and presses her face into the crook where his shoulder meets his neck. Finn follows, burrowing against Poe so that they’re as close as possible, breathing in the warm scent of his skin beneath the brisk clean smell of the medbay. 

“Stars, I missed you,” Poe breathes, his voice cracking, and Finn holds him tighter. BB-8 chirps, left out, but Finn can’t bring himself to let go of Poe to attend to the droid.

“We missed you too,” he says thickly, his eyes wet. He shifts as Rey takes one arm from her embrace and opens it so she can hold him as well as Poe, and for a while the three of them stay tangled in each other, listening to each other’s shaky breaths and relieved laughter.

And then Poe’s stomach growls, and Rey sits back. “Let’s get you back to your quarters, hmm? We’ll take good care of you.”

Poe takes her hand. “Please,” he says. “I’m so hungry.”

He’s weak on his feet still, so they get on either side of him and help him out of bed. He moves a little bonelessly, like he has pins and needles in his feet, but they manage to get him back to his room without much hassle. The thin cloth shirt they issued him in the medbay is a little too small for him, and a strip of belly dips out from the bottom. Finn smiles and teases at it with his thumb once they get him settled into his own bed, and Poe sucks in in surprise.

“Hey,” he says, “that tickles, come on. Take pity on me, I’m weak right now.” He tilts his head to kiss Finn’s shoulder. “Save it for after I eat. I think I lost a couple pounds out there.”

“Don’t worry,” says Finn. “We’ll have those back on you in no time.”

“It looks like it,” Poe agrees, surveying the containers upon containers of food Rey is uncovering and moving closer. “Rey,  _ querida _ , do you have water? I’m still pretty thirsty.”

Rey looks at him like he should know better. “I always have water. I’ll grab some from my room, hang on.” She turns to leave and nearly trips over BB-8, who’s turning worried circles by Poe’s bed. “It’s all right, BB-8. We’ll take care of him. You can rest, don’t worry.”

The droid burbles what sounds like an argument, and Rey shakes her head. “No, there’s nothing you can do. Go charge, relax, your battery is low. We can take it from here.”

“She’s right, B,” says Poe. “I’m okay. You didn’t charge all night, take a nap. I’m going to take one too, in a bit.”

BB-8 grumbles, but ey rolls to eir charging port and emits what sounds suspiciously like a sigh.

Finn settles on the edge of the mattress and leans in, strokes the bruise under Poe’s eye. “What happened here?”

“Scuffle with some First Order intelligence,” he says. “Their higher-ups aren’t trained real well in hand-to-hand, he looks a lot worse than I do, but he got one good hit in. Well - good in that it left a mark. It looks like more damage than he actually did.”

“Can you tell us about it now?” Finn asks, and Poe shakes his head. He’s starting to fidget, bumping his fists together, shifting his weight on the bed, his eyes drifting to the feast they’ve laid out for him.

“I debriefed with the General when I got back last night, she confirmed it’s still classified. ‘Course, I don’t know how much sense I made, I was probably jumping all over the place with what I was telling her.” He rubs his hands together, cracks his knuckles. “It was a pretty smooth mission overall, just got delayed by a change in territories we didn’t have mapped, had to find an alternative route. No trouble, I promise.” His stomach growls again, and he whines. “I’m so hungry, Finn. I want to eat everything.”

“Rey’ll be back in a minute,” he says, stroking Poe’s hair. “She’ll feed you everything.”

As if summoned, Rey appears with a cask of water and a glass, and she pours some out for Poe. “Not too fast,” she says, “hey -”

She grabs his hand, gently takes the glass from him. “Okay,” she says, her voice soft. “I know you’re starving. But we have to go slow. You don’t want to get sick, do you?”

He shakes his head. 

“Good,” she says. “Then let’s get started.”


	12. Chapter 12

Poe keeps fidgeting as Rey takes the cover off a bowl of porridge and picks up a spoon. The closer she brings the food to him, the more antsy he gets, and by the time she sits back beside him with the food, she can see him fighting the urge to grab it from her and shovel it into his mouth. She remembers her own days of wild, gnawing hunger, and she brings the spoon to his lips, satisfied in knowing that she can fill that void for him the way no one ever filled it for her.

He gulps the first bite down and waits for another. Finn settles on his other side, takes his hand. The contact calms Poe a little, and he deflates, pushing back into his pillows.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just - let me do this one, I really need something to eat.”

“Shhhh,” says Rey, bringing him another spoonful. “You’ll go too fast. I’m right here, you’ll feel better once you have some more in your stomach. If you’re good I’ll let you do the next one.”

She gets him through the bowl of porridge, and he’s still wolfing bites by the end, so she makes up a plate of bread and nuna bacon and alternates feeding him bites of each. He can’t swallow those as quickly, and it gets him to slow down enough that she stops worrying he’ll choke.

“Okay,” she says, after a couple slices of bread. “That was very good. Are you ready to do a little by yourself?”

He nods, and she hands him a bowl of fruit and sweet rice. “Slowly,” she reminds him, stroking his belly where it peeks out of his shirt. “Easy, there you go. Good.”

He swallows a large mouthful and comes up for air, lets out a burp. Finn combs through his hair with his fingers, and Poe takes a moment to tilt his head back and moan.

“Are you okay?” Rey asks, and Poe nods, eyes closed. 

“This feels so good,” he says, scooping more into his mouth. “I want to -  _ urp _ \- eat like this all day.”

“All you have to do today is eat,” says Finn, kissing his temple. “Eat and sleep and rest.”

Poe makes a little noise of agreement and scrapes at the sides of the bowl. “Is there any more?”

“Of course,” says Rey.

She feeds him through an entire plate of pastries, then has him drink a glass of water. “How do you feel?” she asks, and he closes his eyes and smiles.

“So good,” he says. “Still hungry, but you guys are doing so well at this.”

She catches Finn’s eye and grins. “Good,” she says, taking a knife and slicing off a round of cheese. “Are you ready for more?”

He nods. 

After the cheese, another few slices of bread, a bowl of hash, another bowl of rice, and a plate of fruit Rey feeds him directly from her fingers, he’s moaning, visibly bloated. But he isn’t making any indication of pain, his expressions still soft and yearning and blissed out, so Rey continues. 

He’s slowed down some now, more content to let her do the work instead of working himself up about getting fed, and she rubs his belly as she brushes bites of meat against his lips. He sucks at her fingers, opens his mouth for more. 

“Can you -” he starts to ask, trying to sit up, but he flops back down after a moment. “Oof, too full. Can you, um, roll my waistband down a little?”

She nods. Finn helps him raise his hips from his bed, and she works the fabric down from his waist, tracing over the red marks where it had started to dig into his skin.

“Getting a little too plump for medbay sizes, aren’t you?” Finn teases, kissing his hair, and Poe gives a lazy smile.

“With the two of you feeding me like this,” he says, “it’s hardly a surprise.” He burps and palms his belly. “Any more,  _ querida _ ?”

“Always,” says Rey, feeding him the last bite of cheese before a bite of bacon. 

She feeds him the rest of the loaf of bread she’d brought along, watching as his breathing becomes more and more labored. He’s moaning a lot now, every little movement seeming to elicit one, but he hasn’t winced or complained at all.

She gropes at his stomach experimentally, and finds that beneath the fat it’s hard, stuffed full. He’s cleaned every plate she’s prepared, and she thinks it’s just as well that all she has left are the little namana cream pies, because he’s beginning to whimper just with the effort of breathing.

“Almost done,” she says, and he frowns a little, but he smiles when he sees the desserts in her hands. 

“I love those,” he says, the words languid, and Finn holds out his hand for her to pass him one. He holds it to Poe’s mouth so he can take a bite, wipes a bit of cream from his lips.

“There you go,” Finn soothes, as Rey gently rubs Poe’s overfull belly. “Nice and slow.”

“Too full to go fast,” Poe mumbles around the pie. “Stuffed.”

“Do you want to stop?” asks Rey, and he shakes his head vehemently.

“I can finish.”

“Okay,” she says evenly. “Tell me if it hurts.”

Poe nods, opens his mouth for Finn.

By the time they’ve fed him the last two little pies, she can tell he needs to stop. He’s chewing slowly, swallowing hard, and he’s panting, so when he opens his mouth for more, she kisses him instead.

“That’s all,” she says. “No more.”

His forehead pinches. “I can do a little more.”

“It’ll make you sick,” she says, stroking his hair. “We don’t want that. Look, you’re so full already, you ate so much. You’ve had plenty.”

He burps and can’t help wincing, and she knows that she’s done well stopping him here. “Come on,” she says, and Finn nods. “Let’s take a nap, okay? You’re all done for now.”

He nods slowly, lets them adjust his pillows, and gets comfortable. They settle in on either side of him, Finn rubbing his belly with one big hand. Poe drags out a long sigh, his stomach groaning. 

"Did I feed you too much?" Rey asks quietly, and Poe smiles, shifts as much as he can to press his face to her chest.   
  
"Not possible,  _ querida _ ," he murmurs. "You were perfect."   
  
He stays there for a moment, and Rey digs her fingers thick into his hair, strokes through it. He makes a little sound against her that could be a sigh or a moan, and she feels a huff of warm air against her skin that she realizes is a burp. She drifts her fingers down to meet Finn’s over his swollen stomach, the hot skin pulled taut, and Poe squirms, arching into their touch.   
  
His stomach gurgles, and he pulls away to flop onto his back and let out a bigger belch. “Stars, I’m full,” he breathes, rubbing a hand over his belly. “I feel like I’m gonna burst.”

Rey pauses. “Your stomach won’t  _ actually  _ burst, will it?”

He smiles, eyes droopy with sleep. “No, don’t worry about that. It’s just a saying. I’ll be fine. Might not be able to zip my pants tomorrow, but that’s not a bad thing.” He hiccups, then winces. “Oooooh,” he moans, groping for Finn’s hand on his stomach. “That hurt.”

“Shhhh,” says Rey. “It’s okay, we’ll make it feel better. Go to sleep, we’ll rub your belly. You did so well, you ate everything I gave you. You were so good for me and Finn.”

Poe nods, eyelids getting heavier. 

“That must have felt nice, hmm? You must be stuffed.” She cards her fingertips through his curls. Finn continues rubbing circles into his stomach, the expression on his face impossibly fond. “You couldn’t move if you wanted to, look at you. So full and sweet.”

“You’re good at this,” Poe slurs, his head lolling against her shoulder. He reaches out and covers Finn’s hand with his own. “You too, you made me feel so nice. Wanna -  _ urrrrrp _ . Sorry. Wanna stay with you forever.”

They take turns kissing his forehead. “I’m okay with that,” says Finn, and Rey spells out  _ y-e-s  _ on the tight canvas of his stomach. 

He drops off to sleep soon after, and Finn stays with him while Rey clears up the empty plates and bowls. She watches them doze together in bed, a feeling like the birth of a star in her chest, so much light filling her that she feels it struggling to get out. She loves them, she thinks, so suddenly it startles her, and she abandons the dishes because in that moment, there is nothing more important than that she is beside them.


	13. Chapter 13

Finn’s mornings feel more stable waking up between both of them. It’s tight with all three of them piled onto one mattress, especially now that they’ve been putting on weight, but the warm press of Rey and Poe’s bodies against him whenever he wakes up in the night brings him a new and evolved sense of safety. He finds he has fewer nightmares when he’s sleeping between them, and he can count on Rey to inevitably follow suit if he jerks awake from a dream. He knows she does the same for Poe - he’s woken himself from tilting dreams only to find Rey with Poe’s face already in her hands, calming him down from his own unconscious horrors, or rubbing his back as his sobs drip off to whimpers. He’s not sure if she’s just a light sleeper or if she can sense their unrest through her sleep cycle, but either way it’s immensely comforting. 

Poe tends to sleep through their bad dreams. But Finn, too, seems to find himself awake seconds before Rey whenever she wakes up frightened and kicking, and each time a searing flare cuts through his dreams as he returns to consciousness, the same amber as the glow of the lightsaber Rey brought back from Dantooine. And sometimes in his dreams his vision will twist into a vortex, and when he opens his eyes, Poe is on the cusp of waking, shuddering through the end of a nightmare, breathing ragged. Finn wraps his body around them when they wake up scared and shaking, uses his weight and warmth to ground them until they feel safe again. 

This morning, Finn is dreaming of a forest. Implicitly he knows he’s following Rey through the trees, but she’s out of sight. He pushes a sheaf of branches out of his way, but when he looks ahead, the trees’ trunks have warped, bending themselves into unnatural shapes, and the forest begins to spin on an axis of blinding orange light. He opens his eyes, and Poe, beside him, is still asleep. But on his other side, Rey is writhing, throwing out elbows, making sounds of distress. Finn moves to wake her, but before his hand makes contact with her shoulder, her eyes snap open, wide with fear, and Finn scoops her closer, feeling her frantic heartbeat in his own chest. She buries her face in Finn’s shoulder, her breathing jagged.

“Hey, hey,” Finn says softly. “It's okay, it's all right. We're right here.”

On his other side, he feels Poe stirring. Finn glances at him over his shoulder, and Poe nods, yawns. He crawls over Finn’s legs and presses against Rey’s other side, and she removes one hand from Finn to grab for his hand.

“You're safe,” Poe overlaps sleepily, as Finn continues to soothe her. “You're on base. You're with us. Shhh, it's okay. You're okay.”

Rey lets out a shuddering whine, but her breathing begins to even in their arms. Finn leans down to kiss the crown of her head while Poe strokes up and down the curve of her side, thumbing at her belly. She’s even stockier now, a protective layer of pudge settling over her musculature. She’s stronger than ever, thanks to her basic training and lessons with Luke - she managed to flip Finn over her shoulder and onto his back while they were sparring the other day, which, considering the amount of weight Finn is carrying these days, is a pretty impressive feat.

“Do you want to tell us about it?” Finn asks once Rey has settled a little, huddled between their bodies. Her grip on their hands is fierce, and Finn is beginning to lose feeling in his fingers. He lets her hang on. He’d gladly lose the hand if it meant keeping her safe; the pins and needles under his skin are a tiny price to pay for her comfort.

Rey sighs, closes her eyes. Some of the color is beginning to come back to her face, and she lets go of Poe’s hand to scrub at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s always the same,” she says, her voice dry and flat. “I’m on Jakku, you said you’d come back and you haven’t. I’m waiting.” Her voice hitches. “And I'm waiting. And waiting. You don't come back. The only one who ever comes back for me is -  _ him _ .” 

“Hey,” says Finn, his heart straining for her. “We will  _ always  _ come back for you. You don't ever have to worry that we won't.”

She nods into his chest, and Finn begins to work the muscles of her hand to give her a physical sensation to focus on. 

Poe strokes her hair. “ _ Estamos aquí _ ,” he murmurs into her neck. “ _ No te preocupes _ .  _ No vamos a ninguna parte. _ ”

Finn catches Poe's eye over Rey's form, shakes his head.  _ Yberian _ , he mouths, but then Rey shifts toward Poe. 

“ _ Lo sé,”  _ she whispers, grabbing a handful of his stomach. “ _ No derajás. _ ”

Poe’s surprise is palpable, but he smiles, kisses the base of her neck. “ _ Está bien _ ,” he replies. “ _ No vamos a dejar _ .”

Finn stares. Nothing should surprise him about Rey anymore, and still -- Her aptitude for languages impresses him especially. Stormtroopers aren’t trained in linguistics, but Rey can switch effortlessly from Basic to droidspeak to Huttese, which he’s heard her speak with Karé in delighted, giggly exchanges over meals in the mess. She can understand Shyriiwook, can speak some language entirely with her hands, if the gestures she’s traded with one of the xeno mechanics is anything to go by. 

“Where did you learn Yberian?” he asks softly, stroking a loose strand of hair from her face.

The crease in her forehead smoothes out a little. “I had a program,” she says, and her voice sounds a little steadier. “A little computer from a Y-Wing. It had a bunch of language programs on it.”

Finn nods. “We’ve gotta get me one of those,” he says, snuggling closer to her. “Maybe you can teach me.”

That makes her smile, and Finn feels her relax a little. “I’d like that.” She twists to kiss his nose, and he smiles. She turns to kiss Poe as well, and Poe smiles and scrunches his nose at her, and Finn’s heart spills over.

“I love you,” he says, natural as a heartbeat, and Rey and Poe turn to him in perfect stereo.

“I love you,” Rey repeats, eyes wide, like out of all the languages she knows, these words are the most foreign.

Finn panics. Maybe this isn’t how you say that. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to. Maybe he’s got it all wrong, and this isn’t love at all. What does he know? He has no way to quantify this feeling. What if he’s just ruined things with the two people he thinks he loves the most?

“Did I do it wrong?” he asks, looking between them. “Am I not supposed to say that? I mean, it’s okay if you - you don’t have to - I just wanted you to know, I didn’t mean -”

“No, no, no!” says Poe, reaching over Rey to take Finn’s hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes - sometimes when you tell people you love them it takes them a minute. Because they’re - overwhelmed, or they’re not expecting it, and they just need a moment to process. I mean - what I’m trying to say is - I love you too, Finn.”

Finn sags in relief. 

“I love you,” Rey whispers, with a smile like dawn breaking over her. 

Poe kisses the skin behind her ear. “You, too.  _ Te quiero. _ ”

“ _ Te quiero _ ,” Finn repeats, trying to flick his tongue around the  _ r  _ the way Poe does.

Poe smiles. “Hey, you almost got it.”

“ _ Te quiero _ ,” says Finn again, and Rey shakes her head, grinning.

“Almost like a  _ d _ ,” she says. “ _ Te quiero _ .”

“Don’t worry,” says Poe. He kisses Rey on the cheek and leaning over to kiss Finn’s too, and Finn revels in the moment, in this snapshot. “You’ve got plenty of time to practice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you thank you thank you for reading!!! let me know how you liked it - leave me a comment here or drop me a line on [tumblr](http://www.alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody.tumblr.com)! :)


End file.
